Ranked as the top five in my class, I had always believed that my academics were not too bad. Yet, a few minutes ago, I had just received the results for my second attempt on the SAT Math Level II exam. I looked at the mirror in front of my computer – my face paralyzed, my jaws dropped, my eyes wide opened like those straight from a rotten body.
I got a 770 out of 800.
You might promptly believe: that is a nice score! Why would you be whining? To be honest, I should not be at all. But as an Asian – or you can call me a dumb one – I frankly felt ashamed after getting a 760 on my first attempt when almost 80% of our class got a bloody perfect score. And my second attempt? Still not a 800. Ohhh Confucius, why do you have to make my life full of shame and embarrassment?
However, if I was not an Asian, would I have ever felt this way? Probably not. I would have pridefully shown my scores to others, possibly bragging about this ‘achievement.’ Or on the polar opposite end, I would have not shown any sign of care on my face because what I got was just a score, and nothing else. But I responded differently. I stopped writing my college essays that would be due a week later to simply put down my frustration – not about my ‘F’ on math, but how college application had gruesomely molded the school environment (at least for my school) into a hostile one.
Competition. That is what defines my class. I study at the bilingual side of my school that basically follows the American curriculum to prepare students to study abroad. Despite the fruitless fact that students are able to choose whether they would like to take ‘demanding’ courses (the term that American colleges adore hearing) during their high school years, more than half of the class – including me – pursue the sole option that we believe we have: to take all classes as the form of Advanced Placement (a total of 5 or 6) in this senior year. Even for those who failed to opt into AP level classes due to the quota that the school sets, weekly tests for all subjects besides music and art are conducted almost every day at 7:30 AM for everyone. Why would students yearn to impose so much stress upon themselves? Admission officers strongly believe the underlying reason is the motivation and fervor that students exhibit to attain college level knowledge. Yet, I would say that 99% of the time, we simply desire the sweet taste of GPA boost that comes from AP/honor level classes we take and reflects on the transcripts we send out.
What exacerbates this mental massacre is the dog-eat-dog mindsets that conquer many of my classmates’ thoughts. ‘Your success is my failure’ – the slogan that I believe would be an excellent definition for our class. I confess, that sometimes I do also feel this way. Seeing my peers winning prestigious national awards, traveling to the Philippines to aid the ‘poor’ kids for four days, or even developing cures for cancer at this age compels me to hide my shame for my inability to attain such great achievements that deserve ultimate praise. Many times, however, the slogan has been reversed to ‘your failure is my success,’ which is exceedingly dreadful when you witness a small bunch of seventeen-year-olds hiding everything they did outside of the class from you while simultaneously crafting out schemes in an attempt to hinder your success. It is the norm to hear the words ‘I did nothing’ when you ask someone what extracurriculars they have…when instead, they have an eternal list of pompous activities on their resumes. Consequently, people rarely ask others this witless question and simply secretly guess what majestic accomplishments you have on your list. It is also the norm to hear students begging for a point boost on their tests – not only on their semester exams, but on the small daily quizzes that count less than 0.05% of our total GPA (because all grades are critical, we stress). Therefore, rarely anyone you find will be willing to tell you what grades they have received since rage and jealously inevitably arise when you get higher grades than what they have gotten. Just a month ago, someone even ‘kindly’ dictated me not to apply for the same college as an early decision simply because that student wanted to increase his/her chances of getting in. Nobody informed me that this ‘Hunger Games’ level of competition would have choked me before I started my high school years. So basically, this is it…
I sometimes wish my parents did not graduate from college so I could be the ‘first-generation kid’ (colleges love them to the point that honoring their existence in the annual statistics enrollment booklet becomes a necessity). I sometimes wish I could paint myself with more colors so I can match the diversity that colleges are constantly stressing in applicants (not just being an Asian who does not even belong to the race and needs severe improvement on math for getting a 770 on SAT II). I sometimes wish my family was broke so I could write about the insurmountable hardships we had faced in my essay. I sometimes wish I could be able to cure cancer like my classmates and all the diseases and hate in this world so I could stand out to admissions officers as the top applicant. Yet, all of these are futile, wishful thoughts – because, we are undoubtedly the products of the college application. I now only wish that with what I have, with what I am whole-heartedly capable and motivated of doing, I can soon mark this college application as a completed phase in my life and move on to other more significant goals in my future (my one saving grace left).
Wow! All you said is brutally true 🙂
This is so relatable, especially in competitive schools in east Asia 🙁