If The Hunger Games were as ruthlessly unfair as the college process, the odds would most definitely never, ever be in your favor. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that if I were in the Hunger Games, I would have a better chance of winning than I have of getting into some of the more esteemed colleges around today.
As a contender in the Hunger Games, a game in which winning is surviving, you have a one in 12 shot, or roughly 8.3%, of winning. Already, you have the same chance of winning a fight to the death as you do of getting into some extremely prestigious colleges. Now, say you’ve been training for these games since you were 10 years old. While the rest of your competition have been sitting back with their feet up, you’ve been preparing for years, learning how to survive off of shrubbery and wild game and mastering the technique of a bow and arrow. You clearly have an advantage here, as none of your competitors ever expected to enter this pointless contrived competition. You’re ready to go with the clear advantage; your chance of winning goes up to 20%.
Now let’s get back to high-school. You’re in the same position as your blood-thirsty fictional counterpart. You’ve been working towards college since you were ten, although you may not have known it. You have the grades, you have the extra-curriculars and, most importantly, you have the same desire to get into the college of your choice as the Hunger Games protagonist does to win. Although in reality it’s far from true, the college process feels – much as the Games – like a matter of life or death.
At least you have your college counselor, right? Well, wrong. Your college counselor has to get you and dozens of other students into places that have tens of thousands of other well-qualified candidates applying. And while the Hunger Games’ competitors also had an advisor, he or she only had to coach one kid against 12 randomly chosen individuals – not 30,000 other worthy competitors.
Something seems to have gone wrong in a college process where it would be easier to survive the Hunger Games than get into some of the colleges to which we are applying. Where people have been pondering what to write about in their college essay since freshmen year. Where summers are oriented towards what looks good on college application forms. Where there are places that reject 94% of the applicants that apply. Where a C+ on your transcript from freshmen year could take you out of the running. Where placing 650 words into a text box seems of equal importance as your academic performance for the past four years. Where the first semester of senior year – four months of your life – feels more like surviving than living. And, most importantly, where college is being subconsciously presented as something that will make or break you.
So, how to deal with this frightening process? Although even I find it difficult to take my own advice, my recommendation would be to stop caring so much about it. If we all truly internalized the message that it really doesn’t matter where we go, that attending Fieldston is probably the greatest thing on all our transcripts, and that it will ensure we all end up going somewhere where we’ll be happy, this whole tedious process would be so much easier. Obviously, this mindset is hard to adopt in this final four-month stretch. But if we all understood that where we end up as Fieldston graduates has no definitive bearing on success, happiness, power, or money later in life, then the odds would have no choice but to be in our favor.
