Dear Colleges,

To be utterly honest with you, I don’t fit into the ‘well-rounded’ student demographic that you are searching for. I really don’t care about what kind of college I get into, or how prestigious it is, I’m just doing this because my parents have this stubborn opinion that the better ranked school I get into, the greater my chances of success will be in the future. All I really want is a place that I can be comfortable with calling it ‘home’ for the next four years, a group of diverse open-minded peers, and an education beyond the means of textbooks and note taking. I’m not the top 1% of my class, I don’t have perfect SAT scores, nor am I captain of any sports team. I am an average student just trying to find a nice place to settle down for the next couple of years; where I can feel safe to decide what I want to do for the rest of my life, and where I can learn the responsibilities of adulthood. I have no motivation to learn a subject I have absolutely no interest in, I haven’t had some life-changing experience where I went to some far-off land and returned with a new perspective on life. I’ve always known what I wanted, but I never liked the system that I was forced to be in. I just want to live a happy life, return the countless favors my parents have done in raising me, and be content with how I’ve reached that point. I hate this educational system that I am stuck in, but the worse of it all is that I’m going to have to follow it, just like every other student before and after me.