It's Okay

In American Studies class on Friday, we discussed Frank Bruni's article "How to Survive the College Admissions Madness," which was in the New York Times on March 13th. (If you haven't read it yet, please do so now before reading my opinions on it). Perhaps because I find myself perpetually stressing over grades and the ACT and college, I found the topic that Bruni struggles with important and relevent. However, I do not agree with some of his points.

This article tells the story of two young students, Peter Hart and Jenna Leahy, as a way of showing that "it's okay to get rejected." Bruni first tells us Hart's story- rejected from his dream schools, he attended Indiana University for college. But it's okay that he got rejected, because he eventually made it to Harvard. Believe me, I think it's great that Hart eventually got to Harvard and thrived. But I think that, for the sake of high school students stressing out about college, we need to realize that it's also great that he got into Indiana University in the first place. Not everyone can go to the Ivy's, and there are other great schools. Yes, it's okay to be rejected, like Bruni says, but it's also okay to never make it to the Ivy's, to never be the elite-elite of the country.

Bruni then goes on to tell Jenna Leahy's story. Leahy was rejected from her top choice schools, and ended up attending Scripps College. Bruni goes on to explain how Leahy accepted and eventually thrived and took risks because of her previous rejection from elite schools. He quotes her as saying "I never would have had the strength, drive, or fearlessness to take suck a risk if I hadn't been rejected so intensely before." This is great, but again I feel that Bruni is patronizing "the rejection" too much. It seems much more understandable that Leahy's success stemmed from her high quality education at Scripps College, not from her rejection of highly selective, elite schools.

I get where Frank Bruni is coming from, and I think his intentions are good; it is okay to be rejected. However, I believe that we need to realize that highly selective, elite schools aren't the only good schools in the world. It's perfectly okay to go to schools like Indiana Univserity. In fact, it's great; it's more than most of the world gets to do.