These past two weeks have been filled with Hollywood headlines, full of gossip and breaking news on the college admissions scandal that broke a couple of weeks ago. As a current college student myself, I have been very interested in this news and how exactly it will be developing.

I, as many other people, was disheartened by the news. I was also not surprised. Everyone knows that it helps to get into a school with a 15% acceptance rate if you have a family member on a board or there is a sum of money donated right before admissions deadlines. This however was just outright cheating. These people took the spots of kids who worked hard in high school and dream of going to schools like the ones included in the scandal.

I was a good student in high school and I had strong applications when I was applying to colleges. I remember how stressful the process was and everyone's obsession with the name brand schools across the nation. It all seemed like a personal issue to me and so I always kept much of my process and decisions to myself. To think that my application at some schools was possibly not even considered because of activities like these going on behind closed doors makes me sad. It makes me sad that I expected more out of the college process in America; the meritocracy. Maybe I was being naive but I was excited exploring schools and deciding where I could end up.

I hope that something good can come out of this. I hope that colleges, especially the ones central in this scandal, are much more prudent in accepting children who actually meet their standards and who they think will actually contribute to their campus. I hope that something like this never happens again and wealth and connections no longer hold such weight in college admissions. As students, we must hold our institutions accountable, and all prospective students must as well. Everyone deserves a fair admissions process and I hope that this college admissions scandal brings that finally.