For the average NYC high school student, the impending arrival of college prep is, frankly, inevitable. In many ways, college talk is inescapable; it can find you in the classroom, at the dinner table, at the movie theater with friends, and next to the Christmas tree during a family reunion. Whether it be an insistent but innocent aunt imploring you to share the contents of the next twenty years of your life with her or a friend bragging about his SAT score and where his father went, college talk is often frustrating and stressful.
TikTok and Instagram, where many teens seek refuge from the pressures of high school life, have now too been infested with acceptance reaction videos and creators sharing their “stats” with the wider public. As Theodore Roosevelt once wisely said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” He certainly would be dismayed by the current climate around college admissions, where making condescending and supercilious comparisons is a hallmark of any good collegiate candidate. “How did Jack get into Harvard and I didn’t? His SAT score is beyond awful; he doesn’t deserve that spot as much as me,” a close friend of mine said just the other day.
According to an EAB study, 48% of high school students surveyed indicated that “stress and anxiety overshadow their college search and planning.” More than half of high school students have stated that the college process as a whole has been the most stressful experience in their lives, according to an NACAC poll. What was once an unfortunate but necessary headache has now become the largest pressure cooker in American culture, one that taints the lives of nearly every young adult in our country.
The stress that comes with the college process has not been helped by the rapid growth of social media sites. Content creators, prospective students, and college counselors looking to make a few bucks all take advantage of these platforms to appeal to the fears and nerves of young adults. Impressionable teens entering the world of college admissions are often immediately bogged down by the feeling that they are not doing enough. It can be discouraging to see a fourteen-year-old who founded five charities and discovered the cures to a dozen diseases getting accepted to your dream school. According to a Princeton Review study, 73% of college applicants have felt “extreme” stress throughout the college process. Additionally, 69% of the parents of these applicants have felt similar stress, displaying how the pressures of applying to college can stretch beyond the minds of teens.
The commercialization of college admissions and the toxic comparison culture that fuels it have transformed what should be an exciting step toward the future into a grueling test of self-worth. While competition is inevitable, the relentless pressure to be extraordinary—at any cost—warps the true purpose of education. College is meant to be a place of growth, exploration, and opportunity, not just a status symbol or a battleground for validation.
So, what can we do? For starters, we can change the conversation. Instead of asking where someone got in, we can ask what excites them about their future. Instead of measuring success by a single acceptance letter, we can recognize the many paths that lead to fulfillment. And perhaps most importantly, we can remind ourselves—and each other—that our value is not determined by a number on a score report or the prestige of a name on a diploma. The pursuit of acceptance—both from colleges and from others—is never as important as accepting ourselves.