Dear Olivia,
As a college student who has always been considered "middle class," let me tell you why the whole scandal is upsetting college students across the country. In high school, hundreds of thousands of students have dreams and aspirations to apply to their dream school, let alone get accepted into the school.
While I was in high school, I went to a small charter school and my chances were already slim to get into the school of my dreams. Every college I applied to required either ACT or SAT scores. Both tests take a lot of time and energy to make sure you are prepared. Lucky for you, if you did well or not mom and dad were able to line the college's pockets with their money. However, some of us aren't as lucky, we spent hours going through SAT practice, praying we got the score we needed to get into a good school. We left the test emotionally, mentally and physically tired. We studied, we stressed, all while your parents paid your way to college.
By having your parents bribe USC of $500,000 proves how bad the wealth gap is between wealthy and middle-class families. Some families can't even afford to pay for the ACT, a test that will determine if a student can help their family and further their education. They can use that money that could pay for the ACT for other necessities, but instead, it is going towards that, so they can watch their child succeed and become better versions of themselves. It's not even the fact that applying to college with application fees, and test fees are expensive, it is the fact that we worked hard, practice hard, and put our souls into getting into our dream school like USC, and all it took for you was to have a check written.
You can't say that "you didn't know" about the whole situation because you posed for rowing pictures that will help enhance your resume. Do you not realize how hard students work in both athletics and academia just to get noticed by recruiters from colleges? They spend years and years just to get prepared for the moment to be noticed. This part was pretty disgusting to hear about on the media. Can you imagine how disappointed the next student was and all current college students are about this? You made the straight A's, clubs, and sacrifices we put in to get into college mean nothing.
I get it, you were probably out of the loop on most of the decisions that were made regarding you gaining admission to get into USC. If you would have thought about maybe getting involved and telling your parents that it shouldn't have been done, you would still have all of the sponsorships and opportunities you had before all of this happened. You still would have been as successful because you are still young and have so much going for you. You could have chosen to not go, and maybe your future wouldn't be in flames.
Do you know why students go to college? They go to college because they want to further their education. They want to better themselves. As a college student, it is not easy to just show up to class after working late, studying hard, only to do it over again. We don't get to take the easy road because our parents bought us this experience. It's not simple like that and the real world isn't either. I have two jobs and I go to school full time. I pay my own bills to get me through school and make sure I survive. This is what most college students have to go through hard work.
We push ourselves to study harder, practice smarter, work more, do more and be better because we are determined to better ourselves. No matter t You have said in your YouTube videos that you are not good in school, you don't go to your classes, but yet you still decided to go to college? What makes it even worse is that you are just going to college for "the partying and experience." If you wanted that you could have done ANYTHING else other than what you did. A typical college student does not pay thousands of dollars just for the partying and experience, we pay thousands to get an education.
However, you did make one thing clear, you don't deserve to be in college, you didn't earn it. We did, I did. I and the rest of the college students who felt personally attacked when your scandal came out, we earned it. We earn it every day by proving that in college, staying up till 2 am, by getting involved in clubs, by walking across the stage at graduation is the only thing money can't buy you. We earned our degree, we didn't pay for it.
