A perspective on the college admissions scandal

Welcome to the game of Monopoly: College Admissions Edition. Your Mr. Monopoly Man is no longer Rich Uncle Pennybags, but instead William Singer. In this game, there aren’t many rules. In fact you don’t even have to roll the dice.

Are you white? Are you wealthy? Are your parents famous, affluent or well connected? Do you want to attend some of the nations top institutions, but don’t quite meet the mark? Georgetown University, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) or even Yale University? You’ve come to the right place, pay up and Mr. Monopoly will land you there.

This past week, a nationwide college admissions scandal was brought to our attention by the media involving many affluent families and renowned individuals.

Amongst them are Felicity Huffman from “Desperate Housewives” and Lori Loughlin from “Full House”, who have been charged in paying bribes to Singer and his illegitimate college preparatory company.

The result was to alter and boost the standardized test scores of their children to guarantee them admission into some of the nations top institutions.

Many more individuals are being questioned and arrested in connection to this scandal. To many, the scandal and the number of people involved came as a surprise.

However, I, and I’m sure some others, are without any disbelief. It only confirms what we already know to be true, college—or for the sake of argument, the college admission process—is a big scam.

During my time in high school, the college admissions process was one of my most stressful experiences, as I’m sure it was for many students throughout the country who had to figure out what Common Application, FAFSA and CSS profiles are without the “consulting” of people like Singer.

I went to a college preparatory high school, Cristo Rey Brooklyn, that seeks to provide students from underserved communities with a rigorous pre-collegiate education and corporate work study program with the ultimate goal of providing college access.

From the moment I stepped into high school, college was the conversation. Therefore, standardized testing became the conversation. When I took a practice standardized exam as a sophomore, it ripped my self-esteem out of my chest, not only because I scored poorly, but because on the back of the exam was a career readiness projectile.

Top performers would be CEOs, while those with scores like mine would earn paycheck-to-paycheck jobs.

This moment has stuck with me since. I can’t shake the feeling of my future being dictated by those results.

Then I took the actual ACT/SAT twice my junior year and twice again my senior year. The scores remained the same. I felt defeated.

It was drilled into me that if you want to get into a good college, you get good grades, you do a couple of extracurriculars, you write a moving personal statement, and you get exceptional standardized test scores, especially if you’re trying to fund your education.

However, I knew that of those things, standardized testing held a huge weight in determining my admittance to many institutions.

I had the grades, resume and work ethic to get into Columbia University or Harvard University, but my test scores without a doubt would get my application automatically tossed away.

Looking back, I realized that I was wrong about the college admission proces’s equation, though it may vary from institution to institution. I think this scandal shows this equation is not one based on hard work or merit. It’s a rigged system and a rigged formula based on wealth, privilege and nepotism.

For so long, people have beat the self-esteem out of minority students, making us feel that the only reason why we get into places like St. Joe’s is because of affirmative action. Our acceptance is based on our skin color and our marginalized identities rather than our merit, and we are seen as a threat to the impartiality of the college admissions process, but the real threat doesn’t look like me.

The threat is in the faces that can pay half a million dollars to have their children’s test scores modified in order to be admitted into institutions like the University of Southern California.

That’s the affirmative action that people should be concerned about. It’s the affirmative action of privilege and whiteness, not the one that’s intended to level the playing field in a society where equality is used as political correctness to avoid conversations of equity.

Equality is giving everyone the same opportunities. Equity is giving everyone what they need to be successful. Those are not the same thing.

They pin our inability to thrive in spaces like this on us. In order to survive in spaces like this, we have to keep overworking ourselves to be recognized. When we try to be “impressive,” it feels like we are entertainment in a modern day minstrel show.

We are square pegs trying to fit in a round hole, a rigged system. Do you know how tiring and disheartening that is?

As a black little girl I was taught that I have to work 10 times harder in life in order to be successful, but that was an understatement. I wish they told me the truth that I will have to work until every breath in me has no more strength to keep going and still not measure up.

College and life for a black woman like me is a series of continuous exhaustion, disappointment and unfairness. This scandal reaffirms that.

I am struggling to succeed here at St. Joe’s not because I’m dumb or incapable. I can’t think, I can’t focus and I’m tired.

I’m burned out and don’t know how to not only navigate life as a black girl, but to do well in it.