It’s that time of year. College admissions decisions are coming out, and high school seniors anxiously await the day that their dream school either fulfills or crushes their plans. Amid the seemingly eternal time period from when students submit their applications and when college decisions are revealed, many students decide that they will try to create a viral “college decision reaction” video, essentially allowing viewers to watch in real-time some of the most important moments of the students’ lives.
In the process of attempting to become famous content creators, these students may unintentionally add unnecessary pressure and ambiguity to many high-achieving students hoping for future admission into elite colleges.
Any student who is at least somewhat stressed out about the prospect of college has gone down a rabbit hole of college-related videos, inevitably leading them to an intriguing college decision reaction video. I can personally attest to this. The amount of doom-scrolling I have done watching random twenty-minute videos of students showing off their admission into elite colleges is far more than a healthy amount. Without fail, these videos create preemptive anxiety as well as an unnecessary urge to compare oneself to others and make baseless assumptions about their academic standing in the eyes of colleges. In the words of the great Theodore Roosevelt: “comparison is the thief of joy.”
There seems to be one constant in the majority of the videos: all the students succeed. After all, a student who was rejected from all eight Ivy League Schools and had no safeties will most likely not be posting their soul-crushing results. I wouldn’t. The least glamorous reaction video will be a student’s rejection from a high-end university and, eventually, an acceptance into a top fifty institution. Gee, it must be tough being that guy!
Viewers can interpret these videos in one of two ways, and neither is optimal for stress relief.
They can view themselves as inferior to the producer of the video and wallow in self-pity as they dreadfully come to an overwhelming perception that they have no chance of getting into their dream college. One fictitious situation leads to another, and suddenly, it becomes easy for them to envision a bleak future for themselves (can you tell I am speaking from experience?).
The alternative is that viewers gain a false sense of satisfaction, believing that, maybe, it is not as difficult as it seems to get into their prospective college. This extreme, for obvious reasons, is detrimental as well.
The videos often begin with an obligatory reminder that acceptance or rejection to a college is not a life-defining moment. Pretty ironic, considering the breakdown the person has when they get into Princeton five minutes later. I do empathize with the impulse to show off to the world a goal that took years of perseverance through late nights, where it all seemed impossible. However, these students must recognize that they are feeding into the already overly stressful environment that surrounds the college admissions process.
All in all, we viewers should not continue to allow ourselves to be slaves to comparison in the increasingly toxic culture stemming from the infamous college decision reaction videos. Stop watching them- for your own mental well-being. In a small way, each of us has the power to ease the stress that accompanies the daunting college admissions process, and we can start now.
