College Culture Is Stuyvesant Culture

Volume 112 No. 8 December 22, 2021

stuyspec.com

Dear Readers,

Stuyvesant is infamous for its pressure-cooker environment, where students fxate on grades, tests, and extracurriculars. In many respects, this assertion is true, where the mindset on attending an elite college starts by the time students enter Stuyvesant as freshmen. We feel that our fates are handed to us as we open our acceptance, deferral, and rejection letters––our lives sealed away at the ripe old age of 17.

From analyzing college statistics to interviewing alumni and teachers—some of whom attended Stuyvesant—the Editorial Board dove into the admissions process and college culture at Stuyvesant to curate The Spectator’s College Issue. As a school, we’ve let the allure of Ivy League universities dominate our conversations and future prospects for far too long. It’s time to get real about college and admissions at Stuyvesant.

––Morris Raskin and Karen Zhang Editors-in-Chief

College by the Numbers

See page 29 to read more.

Adrianna Peng / The Spectator

By MAYA NELSON, KENISHA MAHAJAN, ANISHA SINGHAL, and ALYSSA CHOI

College is always on our minds. Stuyvesant students anxiously scroll through websites like CollegeVine and college subreddits or listen to horror stories from friends. We know you’re anxious, so the Stuyvesant Spectator has looked into four of the most commonly circulated myths––about everything from summer jobs to freshman year––to debunk (or confrm) their validity.

One of the most common college claims at Stuyvesant involves some variation of the age-old adage “Colleges hate Stuyvesant!” Despite dozens of students being sent to the Ivies and other elite institutions every year, many are still insistent on the fact that going to Stuyvesant harms your application in some way, believing that if they went to a lower ranked school (but earned similar grades and scores), they would be more readily accepted into top schools. If anything, however, going to Stuyvesant actually helps your application.

“The simple answer [is] absolutely not,” Stuyvesant college counselor Jeff Makris said. “It’s completely false, and in fact, the opposite is true. This is seen as one of the most rigorous high schools in the United States. There’s only around two dozen schools in the country that have the same kind of clout when it comes to public schools. They respect us immensely because of students’ academic ability [and] the robust extracurricular opportunities here.”

Let’s look at the numbers. Nineteen Stuyvesant students were admitted to Harvard, 15 to Yale, and a whopping 58 to Cornell in 2020. And that’s just three Ivies—over 250 students were admitted to Binghamton and Stony Brook, top state schools. One might make the argument that there were still many qualifed students who didn’t get accepted, but there’s no denying that 19 students admitted to Harvard is gargantuan. Most schools around the country, regardless of size, will struggle to even send one.

The Ivy-centric mindset at Stuyvesant often distracts from the fact that any elite college is incredibly diffcult to get into. “I think the myth comes from our students who fxate on a very small group of incredibly selective schools that have very low admission rates. While these colleges respect our students and love to see our students apply, they’re still going to deny the majority of kids because they can’t fll their entire class with kids from Stuy,” Makris said. It’s not just Stuyvesant where qualifed applicants just don’t make the cut—being top of your class at a lower ranked school doesn’t guarantee admission. Yes, there are many students at Stuyvesant who probably think they “deserve” to get into these top schools, but there are so many factors that contribute to who gets in and who does not.

While your freshman year grades are factored into your overall average, colleges are not going to hold a B in biology against you. Freshman year is a time of adjustment, and colleges understand. The transition to high school often means that students’ frst semester grades won’t be their best, but that doesn’t mean one should stress. “Colleges do understand that students do better once they have a chance to adjust to high school,” Makris said. Colleges like to see growth across all four years, so starting off rough freshman year won’t hurt your chances–– it might even help them, as colleges appreciate seeing students’ upward academic trajectories.

Rather than dwelling on a subpar class grade, try out clubs and courses that interest you. That way, you can spend the next three years pursuing felds you’re interested in and gaining leadership roles in clubs you’re passionate about.

When it comes to thinking about college in your freshman year, that’s

continued on page 3

By AARON VISSER, JENNY LIU, and SHAFIUL HAQUE

The defning characteristic of “Stuy Culture” is masochism. Students complain about their hardships: the scarce free time they have between homework, studying, and extracurriculars. We revel in “failed” tests and late nights. We want sympathy, but often the pain is the point. It demonstrates just how Stuyvesant we are. It’s a non-gendered toxic masculinity of academic pain tolerance. Everyone who attends Stuyvesant chose to enter this academic coliseum. Most of us were well aware of Stuyvesant’s legendary competitive environment. So next time we complain about academic competition or the intense fxation on elite colleges, take us with a grain of salt. Stuyvesant wouldn’t be Stuyvesant without the culture of high achievement, academic motivation, and the ultimate goal of attending an elite college. It’s why we chose to go here and our parents chose to send us here. While bad mental health and toxic fxation on elite colleges are problems, college culture is a feature, not a bug, of the Stuyvesant experience.

Stuyvesant is a school of high achievers. Sixty percent of the incoming freshman class thinks they’ll be in the academic top 25 percent of the grade come senior year. Stuyvesant students were the best at math and humanities in their respective middle schools, ingraining high achievement in their identities. We believe that we are the best and will do whatever it takes to showcase our academic knowledge to the rest of the school. This hardworking mindset can have positive implications. Most students attend school, participate in classes, and stay on top of their studies to their best ability. They prioritize their future success in a way that will be advantageous down the line. These attributes we take for granted are absent from so many other schools.

However, the obsession with future success and admission to an elite college can be detrimental to the present. Stuyvesant students love to pile on stress and anxiety, which damages their mental health. We pride ourselves on running on low sleep, even when it’s known to harm our physical well-being. Additionally, the distant four years of college take priority over high school, which lasts just as long––some perceive Stuyvesant as merely a stepping stone to a prestigious university. Most of us would probably care about college wherever we went, but Stuyvesant serves to reinforce and strengthen toxic college culture.

The culture tells us to make it into an Ivy League college or be a failure. It tells us prestige over price, private over public. Intellectually, we know it’s not true. We know that many schools can deliver a quality education and that we don’t need a high ranked school to reaffrm our intelligence. But we’re unable to comprehend those facts on an emotional level.

Stuyvesant’s college culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The American college system has major issues. America seems to view college as the pinnacle of human experience, the culmination of all previous years. The application

process is arduous and the tuition gratuitous. We have hundreds of options, each more luxurious and expensive than the last. And at the end of the day, it’s not about the experience but the credential. Most people don’t really want to go to Harvard, they want to have been to Harvard. This phenomenon was revealed clearly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when universities charged the same tuition for remote classes. Obsession with college has kept pace with prices.

Fanatical parents do everything they can to get their special snowfakes into the school they deserve: throwing fts over low test scores, hiring expensive college advisors to help with their applications and essays, and building the ideal extracurricular combination. Nothing embodied this trend more than the recent college admissions scandal, when wealthy and connected parents cut the line, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their kids into elite schools. We have gone too far.

It’s not a Stuyvesant college culture, but an American one. We do have a high achievement culture, an obsession with the best and most exclusive. Of course we want to go to the best schools.

In the coming months, many of us will be let down. While 70 percent of freshmen wanted to attend an Ivy League or elite college, once they became seniors, only 47 percent actually did. We’ll look around at our friends going to their frst choice schools, see them wearing their college shirts and stating their schools in humble brags. They’ll get to live out their Stuyvesant dream, getting rewarded for their hard work with the elite university they deserve. We’ll feel inadequate and unsatisfed, like someone ended our story before we got the happily ever after. It doesn’t have to be this way. Elite colleges may be no better than state schools, which have challenging honors programs. And a brand name isn’t the key to happiness or the meaning of life. Don’t tether your well-being to an illusory achievement so likely to let you down.

Nelli Rojas-Cessa / The Spectator

College Mythbusters, p. 1, 3

College Culture Is Stuyvesant Culture, p. 1

Mother Knows Best: Parents’ Takes on the College Process, p. 2

Stuyvesant’s Feelings, Philosophies, and Fears about College, p. 2

Beyond the Ivies, p. 3

Some Advice for Applying to College, p. 4

College by the Numbers, p. 29

From Alumni to Teachers: Are Ivies Worth It?, p. 30-31

Seniors’ VOICES on the College Process, p. 32

“TOUCHDOWN”: One College Essay That Worked, p. 32