I scroll through my Facebook newsfeed, but my thumb stops moving across the screen when I see it: an FBI investigation about admissions fraud at Yale University. The “Yale Memes for Special Snowflake Teens” page fills with memes on photoshopping students into athletic photos and paying $400,000 for admission. Friends, former teachers, and classmates share articles about the implications of this case. Although I laugh, the joy fades. I am disturbed, but not surprised. The admissions scandal illustrates the well-known power of wealth in the college admission process.
Since an early age, my mother and father have always emphasized the importance of doing well in school. I spent weekends watching my mother labor at the sewing factory for below minimum wage well beyond 45 hours a week. As much as I wished she would take on a less physically arduous job, my mother’s tenuous legal status leaves her no choice but to work in a dirty, uncomfortable setting. Learning about my mother’s sacrifices informed me of the immense limitations and struggles that one’s lack of a stable legal status imposes. Moreover, I became even more driven to take advantage of the opportunities granted by my citizenship. Even the language I speak at home reflects the values that my parents instilled in me, as my vocabulary in Wenzhounese (a Chinese dialect) spans to topics on poverty, education, college, and aspirations of a high-paying job.
As a child of immigrant parents, I have been ingrained with the common notion that regardless of our circumstances, if we work hard enough, we can achieve the American Dream. My parents aspire for their children to excel in academics enabling them to obtain a high-paying job, and spend that money on a beautiful grand house, Louis Vuitton merchandise, expensive dinners, and so on. Despite not being well verse on the American college system having attended only elementary school in China, my parents still managed to learn about the “big name” universities. They could not help but indulge in the fantasy that I would get into Hah-vuh da xue (Harvard University) or Yal-oo da xue (Yale University). My acceptance to Yale affirmed my parent’s faith in the America Dream. Even better, our financial status meant that I did not have to pay a single dollar to attend. Yale would cover all costs.
I believe I am lucky. This is not to say that I believe I did not deserve to be accepted into a top university. I spent months independently preparing for the SATs to avoid financially burdening my parents. I learned to fill out the long and tedious FAFSA application. I attended parent meetings, intended for only parents, because neither one of my parents spoke English well. However, plenty of other first-generation and/or low-income students in New York City and throughout the United States share experiences like mine. A scandal like this demeans the distinguished efforts, struggles, and accomplishments of students who had to begin the college process from scratch. What took me and others hours, days, and years of hard work to earn was easily obtained with a parents’ check filled with zeros.
These suggestions especially raise concerns for future generations of college applicants. FGLI college students serve as role models, instilling hope for other high school students of similar background to apply to elite universities. We serve as individuals who turn dreams of going to college into a tangible, reachable goal. However, this scandal reminds us that meritocracy is dead at large. How can we then have faith in the integrity of the admissions process that relies on meritocracy?
We can’t. While watching Lori Loughlin’s daughter, Jade Olivia, state that she did not care about school, I felt a rush of anger and confusion. People with a background like hers are able to be careless about education because they have the safety net and the connections that provide her with financial security after graduation. I have met many people just like Jade. They have told me they go to college “for the experience,” code for partying. But I go to college so that I can break the generations of poverty that my family has lived in and take advantages of the opportunities offered through my parents’ sacrifices. Despite graduating with the same degree, we both know our trajectories will be vastly different.
While I am grateful that this scandal has drawn the national outrage that it merits, I am also disappointed that acts like these just recently gained recognition. There are other ways in which parents have “bought” their children entrance into selective universities, such as paid writing tutors who write the entirety of students’ personal statements or parents who donate millions of dollars for the construction of a building. When I think about these unfair acts like these, I feel stuck in a constant battle between the belief that I can work hard to obtain social mobility and the harsh reality that wealthy groups have an advantage regardless. Even among qualified students, I feel intimidated by the disparate socioeconomic background that the student body comes from. During casual conversations with colleagues, they bring up their guaranteed prospective job out of college and that they are not too concerned about receiving a low grade, because, at the end of the day, they just need to graduate. I did not come in with such a background; instead, I must take an extra step to establish similar connections and career networks. Moments like these remind me of the inequity that manifests not only during the process of applying to college but also while in college.
I am upset, angry, and disheartened by the immorality of the scandal, yet I am proud. I am proud of the other FGLI students across the country who have overcome adversity to attend college or pursue other careers. Don’t pity us. Get angry at Lori Loughlin and her daughter, but we cannot be solely angry at them. They are not special. They represent a product of the systemic socio-economic inequity that exists in America. Be angry about that.
~Jennifer Qu’22
