We have been told since childhood that college is the key to success. Get good grades, participate in extracurriculars, study hard. If you do all of these things, you should get into a good college. Now more than ever, students are competing for relatively few spots.

We put so much pressure on doing well on a single exam. While it is supposed to give students an equal chance at success, wealthier students have a much larger advantage. They can hire top of the line tutors - ones that go for $1000+ an hour. By comparison, their less well-off counterparts are stuck teaching themselves how to take the SATs or ACTs. They may not have the liberty to take the exam multiple times and may be stuck with their first score. We make it seem that the only way to be successful - and for poor people, the only way to overcome an unfortunate situation - is to go to a good college. This is just not the case. Plenty of successful people have forgone college to pursue passions or trades.