 Welcome to Teens on Topic, I'm your host, Emma Arnson, and today I'm joined by Grace Hawth, Zoe Poppinger, Issa Shake. College admissions is what is on a lot of high school students' minds, but let's see how the rest of the Davis community feels about them. Do you think college admissions are fair? Can you repeat that? College admissions are fair? No, for sure it's not. Admissions? Yeah, I know. I think so. I think it's fair. I know. Um, sort of. I mean, I think that there's definitely things that we could improve. I think I want to believe it is, and I have two boys in college, and I believe they got in fairly, but, you know, I think we can always do better. And I believe that, you know, it's coming out that it's not, you know, there's definitely people who aren't playing fairly, but we can, I hope we can improve that. Yes and no, I feel like there's kind of like a toss-up between the two, so it's kind of running into that. Yeah, I agree with her. It's just all really depends. It all depends on the person and like, you really have to look into it. Do you think there's any way they could like improve the college admissions system? I can't think right off the bat what would be a good way to improve the system, but there are definitely room for improvement. For sure. Yeah, transparency for sure. Like how she said, like there is room for improvement, it's just kind of hard to tell what that would be. I just, I think that they shouldn't look at who you are and just look at the applications in general. Definitely, I feel like, like who's making these decisions, you know, so I feel like that's very secret, secrecy kind of like small. So opening up that pool to have a diverse people that make these decisions, you know, because if not, you're just keeping it to a selected few and they don't know everything, you know. For sure. Do you think they'll ever like be fair if they find some way to change the system? Nah, this is, this is a colonized education we're getting here, so we have like a systematic oppression from the top down, you know, so I don't think it'll change. It can, maybe if we infiltrate, but that's gonna be a while, I feel. Seems like, well, first of all, standardized tests, I don't think are a good measure of people's actual worth and how well they'll do in college. I also don't think everyone has a fair chance of getting into college necessarily, so I think everybody should have that opportunity if they're striving for it and if it's their goal. Do you think like the elimination of standardized testing would actually make it like more merit-based to get into college? Hopefully, I think something has to replace it, like you still need to measure students somehow, but I think standardized testing, you're just learning a test and it's not a good measure. People just pay for classes, yeah. I agree with that, that's something exciting. Yeah, thank you. Well, there was a lot of interesting opinions, I think it was a real toss-up in between saying people were like, yeah, it's fair and as tough people seem pretty determined that it wasn't fair. What did you guys think about what they had to say? I agree that there is definitely a lot of bias that goes into these college admission exams because it comes a lot down to how much money you have. To put it very, very simply, even for testing, you can get a paid tutor, paid classes, and if you're working a job or if you just don't have that money to pay for those classes, that does put you at a significant disadvantage. So I agree that financial stability of the family matters too much. It matters way too much, even if the colleges claim that they don't put that into effect. It's what they consider that systems manipulate and they say, okay, if you have money then this will be easier for you. I'm not saying that you will get in, but I'm saying it will be considerably easier unless you cheat. Like in the college admission scandal that was pulled up recently. Yeah, I think I'm kind of in between because I am on, I think one side of the college admissions process, you're on the other. Grace and I are seniors and then you guys are sophomores and juniors respectively. So I think it's interesting to see the differing opinions because obviously me and Grace have gone through the college admission process and we've kind of seen the ins and outs. Well, I think I know so much more about college admissions. Obviously it's a big mystery overall and no one really knows the exacts, but I think it's interesting comparing our opinions because I think that in my opinion college admissions it's going to be different for every single college. And there's no need for a college to have, every single college to have the same exact thing because a college doesn't necessarily need to admit you. Like you don't have a right to be admitted to college, but I do think, I do think that there is definitely unfair aspects, especially when it comes to private schools. Yeah, I think it's a fair point to bring up the private schools in this country. Elite schools specifically, there's a lot of good private liberal arts colleges, small colleges. But when you look at elite schools like Harvard, there's this systematic, because when we look at a college, what's the first number without reading a lot that you can tell if a college is good or not? Acceptance rate, everybody looks at that. So these colleges will try to get as many people as they can interested to apply so that they can deny them. You want a 6% acceptance rate, you want a 4% acceptance rate, you want to keep that as low as you can so that people are enlisting in your school. So there's definitely that kind of unfairness towards trying to get people denied basically. And it's not like your education is that much greater at a school like Harvard, it's really about the name that signs off on your diploma, what your diploma is printed on. You can say that you went to Harvard in every conversation that you ever have for the rest of your life. But other than that, you can get really good education at smaller schools. And it can cost you nothing. For the people who actually can't afford colleges, they can go free with the bug fee waiver in California to any community college and then from their transfer on scholarships to any four-year school. And so a lot of it is how we as a people, we as parents and as applicants look at elite schools and bigger name schools and really try to see that we really see them through the prestige that they market themselves through. And we're forgetting that there's an entire world of education outside of the Ivy League. I agree with that. As someone who's applied to college, different levels, whether it's like community or UCs, depending on the status or the level, I guess you could say of the school, there's different requirements within the application process itself. And thinking back to some of them have the same types of education, it's just at a different level. It's how much status does play into the application role itself and then economically or socially. Yeah, I think the definitely besides just the college admission process, how people view colleges as you were saying is I think a big thing that I wish I could see change because I have taken a couple classes at the community college. So I like met a lot of different people who go to community college. And I think the community college has like this bad stigma of being only for people who like fails high school and who are really bad and just not smart at all. And I think that's completely not true. I know people who say they're like considering community college and they're like really smart individuals and everyone's like community college. Why would you ever do that? Why would you like throw your education away? And that's just it's not the case. I mean, even people who do fail in college, sorry, in high school and have a horrible time throughout those four years, they can bounce back. Yeah. And I think there's something that we haven't talked about yet, which is the I think somebody wanted this couple of the adults mentioned in the clips, which is the idea that college admissions are unfair because of the two basically buckets that colleges keep aside right affirmative action, which we've discussed on this show before, and then legacy students, which is basically students who have had relatives go to college. You see this a lot nearly institutions. And so people, the varying degrees, see the college admissions candle that we brought up as indicative of the unfairness that it's tougher for. I mean, the just Department of Justice is looking into Harvard for discriminatory practices against Asians, Chinese and Indian specifics. Indian students specifically, but that it's tougher for white in Asian students to apply as well as it's tougher for parents for people who haven't had their parents go to college. Although that looks good on your application, the idea that there are legacy, that there are spots reserved from you from birth, it strikes everybody as unfair. But there's this whole idea that people are looking at this scandal where famous people, rich people have bought their ways into college and making excuses, right? You see this as indicative of unfairness in America, but you don't realize that there was this boy in the news recently, 17 years old, homeless youth. He was homeless for a really long time, but he got into all 17 colleges that he applied to. So although there are definitely large unfairnesses, large issues with the way our elite institutions or colleges run themselves as it relates to admissions, this is still America, right? There's still a way for anybody to get into college, to go on scholarships, to transfer for a community college and make a name for yourself, make money for yourself. Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think when talking about colleges, I like to think of it as like two totally different things like there's private colleges and then there's public colleges. And I think private colleges, it's kind of, this is a little controversial I guess, but kind of up to their discretion. I mean, I think it's definitely wrong that if you could buy your way into a college, but I have a little more leeway in my opinion on colleges when they are private. I think a public institution is like definitely a totally different story and I think they should be a lot more open with their practices. But I think private schools, in my opinion, it's more okay with them or with me to have them have like slightly more unfair. Right, so even outside of bribery we've seen this for your world. People will bribe private institutions out in the public right, you'll buy a library, you'll buy a hall and that's guaranteed admission. So you don't have to necessarily do the type of scam that we saw in the news recently. This has been going on for a while and to a certain extent, yeah, you're right. I will say though that despite the differentiation we draw between public and private schools, the majority of colleges in this country are to a certain extent public because of the amount of government's funding that's in every small bit of college. That's true, that's definitely a good point, I didn't really think about that way before. Yeah, I think college is just, I'm pretty sure that college admission scandals have existed for as long as colleges were around and I think they'll last until colleges aren't around anymore if that ever came. But I think it's just, I was not surprised at all when I heard about this. I was like, this has been going on, I feel like we all knew about it. It just wasn't out in the open and it definitely, I don't think it'll even put a damper on what's happening. Like maybe for a little bit, but I think people will still bribe their way in. I think they'll still get away with doing that just because that's how the nature of college is and how it's so secretive that you can get away with stuff like that. Yeah, I think some new person is going to show up and say, give me your money and I'll get your kids in. It wasn't just that guy, that guy is not the person of this idea of self entitlement that I can use my money to get my kids where I want them to be. He was just someone who just marketed off that want. Someone else is going to come and do that. Yeah, I agree those four year consideration things have always been very prominent in the college systems by a building, by a statue, by something and your kid will have a lot easier chance of getting in. And I do agree that there is always a way, especially in America, there is always a way to get where you want to be, but it's just so unfair how much more difficult that path is for some people than others. And then there is such extreme sides to how difficult it can be. There can be the most difficult and there could be money solves your problems. And not every problem is a disclaimer, not every single little problem, but a considerable amount. Yeah, I would agree. I just don't see how people could start to be better with college admissions process. I don't see how it could be more fair. Not that I don't think it's fair, but I don't off the top of my head think of any way that it could be immediately improved, especially because if they start being more transparent with what they're looking for and what they're doing, I think that will put a lot of stress on students to be exactly like how the person is going to be. So I think to a certain degree the privacy of colleges to not talk specifically about what they're doing. I mean everyone knows that like you play a sport, you like volunteer, you do all these different things will help you get into college. But I think when colleges start saying this is specifically like the student we're looking for in our application process that I think that's going to take away a lot from the individual and a lot of like freedom to people. To a certain extent they already do that, right? There's these college counselors, they will go to schools and say, oh yeah, this is what we want. We want somebody who's done all this community service, who's done all this, yada yada. And high school students from freshman year, even from middle school, even from elementary school you'll see parents grooming their kids for elite institutions for their college application process. And it really takes away from being a child, you're not a child anymore because you're working for that 4.0 GPA for that 7 billion SAT score and for the 12 hours a day of community service. And obviously the 12 sports this semester. One thing that I don't think would solve making college admissions more fair but might be interesting is having a part on the application or a process where students could state why they want to go to that school and why they think they'd be a good fit for that school because there is a part of meeting the requirements and saying, oh, I've done these extra curriculars and I met all these great requirements and the whole thing with parents possibly grooming students to go there or paying for them to go there. But I don't think there's enough talk about why you want to go to college. I know personally from high school since the start they're like, oh, you should start getting prepared for college. Do these extra curriculars? Do community service? And then when it comes time to actually apply, I know at the beginning of junior and senior year I was really struggling because I didn't know why I wanted to do this. I just knew that I had to meet the requirements. And then when I actually started applying it was like, why do I want to go here? Where do I want to go? So I think that might be an interesting thing to have colleges or big institutions look at seeing, okay, you met the requirements but why do you want to go here and why should you go here? I think there was a lot of really good points brought up here and I think we'll continue this debate. I don't see a stallion anytime soon. But thank you guys so much for joining me on here today. And join us next week where we're talking more about college admissions.