The Kids Aren't Alright

I was researching the top 100 colleges in america today, and i noticed that Ivy-League schools top the lists. Appearently, they offer a great education. Which, to me, just doesnt make sense. After all, George Bush graduated from Yale, so how good could they possibly be?

(Obligitory shot at stupid people is out of the way). Seriously though, the guy isn't smart, at all, yet it says at www.usnews.com that they are "most selective". So, what kind of selection process goes into choosing who gets accepted into these highly-prostegious(and expensive) schools? We can probably assume, barring some kind of miracle, that "Dub-ya" didn't score very high on his SAT, nor, given his public speaking skills, would have nailed any interviews. So what qualified him to attend an Ivy-League school? I'm not sure, so I'm just gonna take a guess...

Daddy is rich, which means you can get whatever you want.

So that's the requirement? Having a lot of money means you can attend the best schools? Because he obviously didn't deserve to attend based on academic merit. Just another example, I guess, of how messed up the system is. Why is it that someone who doesn't deserve to attend can be accepted into a school just because his daddy is rich and well-connected? I bet it doesn't say THIS on the Yale application...

name________

SAT score__________
Interview__________
(Board of admissions may choose to ignore your qualifications if you have a lot of money).

So George Bush can go to Yale because his daddy has a lot of money and is well-connected, but my financial aid won't even completely cover my tuition at COMMUNITY COLLEGE? What kind of system is this? It rewards the rich simply because they are rich, hands them the keys to everything, while the rest of us work 40+ hours a week just to squeeze by. Ridiculous.

I think we over-value Ivy-League schools anyway. I mean, Einstein didn't attend Princeton, and Thomas Jefferson didn't graduate from Harvard. Personally, any college that would accept someone like Bush, not based on qualifications or merit, but soley on connections and money isn't somewhere I'd like to go anyway. Besides, they couldn't make Bush intelligent, so it sounds like they do a pretty crappy job anyway. So when the value of Ivy-League educations are being tarnished by being sold to the highest bidder, what does that say about the state of society? Colleges are supposed to be where "kids" go to become educated, not only in the field of their choice, but in how the world works. So what do they learn from that little tale, that being rich is valued at least ast highly as being intelligent and determined? That we have some serious problems, not only as a society, but also at the core of these "higher-education institutions". Bush, by academic merit alone, could not have deserved to go to Yale. Period. Assuming that an academic institution actually cared about it's prospective student's academic qualifications:

"In selecting a freshman class of 1300 from nearly 20,000 applicants each year, the Yale Admissions Committee attempts to answer two questions: "Who is likely to make the most of Yale's resources?" and "Who will contribute most significantly to the Yale community?" These questions suggest an approach to evaluating applicants that is more complex than simply looking for students with the highest GPAs or those who are well-rounded or have specialized talents. Given the large number of extremely able candidates who apply to Yale and the limited number of spaces in the freshman class, no simple profile of grades, scores, interests and activities can assure a student of admission to Yale. The admissions staff considers each application individually and tries to get as full a sense of the applicant as possible."


So basically, the Yale admissions website is telling us "Hey, you don't have to meet any specific adacemic marks...we judge you on a wallet-by-wallet basis." I love the last sentence...it's basically their "catch-all" clause for letting morons with lots of money into their establishment. Of course, they go on to say that they are an academic institution(to save face, in my opinion, so as not to admit they care more about wallet size than acedemic credentials), but it's funny they would only mention that acedemics are important AFTER they've said that they'll disregard academics in favor of other factors.

Basically, the point I've been trying to make is that the rich can get whatever they want, regardless of whether they deserve it based on individual, simply because they are rich. You have a lot of money, so even if your son is an idiot, he can still get into an Ivy-League school. Then, using his underserved degree, he gets a great job(say, president of the united states), over several other qualified candidates who aren't as well-connected, becomes even richer, and the cycle continues. Two basic points I'd like to make here. 1, in this country,

The Rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer

It's a fact, look it up. The top 2% controls over 90% of the money in this country, and the gap gets larger by the year. And these supposed "academic-institutions" are whoring themselves out to whoever can pay the bill simply because they have money, and then give bullshit excuses for their admission policies like "The admissions staff considers each application individually and tries to get as full a sense of the applicant as possible", denying the kid from Compton with the 4.0 because he can't afford it, but accepting the idiot from private school because he can pay and daddy is famous? They're just perpetuating the cycle, and they don't even care.

And second........Bush is an idiot. I have a quota to meet here, people. Besides, if I say it enough, maybe people will start believing me.

Here's a Thought... How about the government just pays for everyone to go to college wherever they want. Seriously, it's brillant. Granted, the cost of such a thing would be huge, but since we've decided to start racking up a tab anyway we might as well do something that would benifit the american people. See, if everyone could afford to go to Yale, then they would actually accept people based soley on merit. Then, the people who deserved to be there would be, and those are intelligent and work hard would get accepted and the idiot who was rich wouldn't be, because money wouldn't matter anymore. The hard-worker from Compton would get his Ivy-League degree, and Bush would be joining me at community college. But this is the NEW america. Money and connections, not performance and merit, determine your status in life. That's why we, the hard working middle/lower class are killing ourselves just to break even, and the rich idiot is ruling, running, and ruining our once-great nation.