Prestige won’t answer ‘why?’ this application season

The Honors Program center on the second floor of the Learning Resource Center William Stanley | Lariat

My first class at Saddleback was Intro to Statistics. I sat halfway to the back on the left side of the classroom, held my bag in my lap during the 40 minute lecture and tore the sign-in sheet from pressing my pen too hard on my way out. 

Prestige and building an interesting transfer resume were the last things on my mind. I had settled on going anywhere out of state that accepted me, paying special attention to Western Undergraduate Exchange schools with admissions over 90%.

Throughout that semester, as my confidence steadily strengthened, Common App essay topics were not what motivated me to get involved. With shaky hands, sometime in September, I flitted out an email to the adviser of our campus journal, solely motivated by becoming a part of something I was passionate about. 

I liked to write, so I joined groups of people and programs on campus that encouraged writing. I loved Saddleback for having those opportunities, but there was something mysterious going on underneath the surface. There was this subtle and unspoken suffocation—in a peer’s eye, I’d catch a flicker every once in a while of that same existential, dejected, competitive dread.

Without realizing it, this began to saturate the way I saw my prospective schooling. As I branched out into schools that would better fit my ambition, something other than genuine interest had leaked into the way I saw myself in connection to academia: fear of failure. 

In the transfer center, the honor’s section at the LRC and my major-prep classes, there’s this compounding and restricting urgency in getting out and clawing for prestige. A lot of times, it’s traced back to high school: many of the other people I’ve met who are dead set on T10 universities, whether they went to Dana Hills, San Clemente or any other South County school, carry themselves with this suffocating promise of a redo—a way to make right what happened two years prior. 

Though on the face dissonant with how we’re told we are supposed to find a dream school, I empathize with that skittish urgency. As my peers started a new chapter at schools like Berkeley and UCLA, it felt frustrating and at times even humiliating to be left behind, but internalizing that moment and chasing redemption from it was never going to make me happy. 

It was never going to change what happened. All anyone transferring out this fall can control is what happens next.

Tracing this pressure back even past high school, there’s this generational whisper of fulfillment I’ve seen people hold onto and have, with great internal resentment, held onto myself as well.

A few years ago, talking to my father about school when we were in the hot tub, as he looked wistfully out into the distance and crossed his arms, he told me “Well… everyone I knew who went into tech has really gotten their return on that. Definitely something to look into.” 

In the era of socially antagonizing Bay Area computer science programs spewing out the next generation of unhoused software engineers, this approach would leave me both spiritually and financially destitute. More importantly, it has nothing to do with what I want or why I want it. 

The inter-student academic culture at Saddleback boils down, especially in STEM circles—though admittedly in humanity ones as well—to: cast the largest possible net in extracurriculars; do whatever’s necessary for the honor’s 4.0; pick up the pieces and figure out why later. 

In a study from February 2024, the Community College Resource Center reports that only 16% of US community college students successfully transfer out and earn their bachelor’s degrees. 

Many of my peers, especially ones whom I’ve met in general education classes, slipped through the cracks sometime between their second and third semesters. Whether they were never interested at all, had some sparkle that was snuffed out by a bad Composition professor, or drained as the product of some other academic tragedy, they weren’t able to find footing at Saddleback.

I don’t blame them. It’s incredibly difficult to build a strong set of motivations when surrounded by the student body equivalent of a zombie fumbling for a familiar light from their past; that, or some guy from high school who’s popping Zyns in the back and leaves 20 minutes before class is over. 

Here’s my response: our lives have already started. We’re all adults. The rubrics outlining our fulfillment are exclusively of our own design. If the student and faculty environment of a T10 school will provide the resources to learn more about what you truly love and are driven to pursue, by God—keep fighting for it! Full honesty here, that’s what I’ve decided for myself. 

But if a school like Arizona State University or Chico State has the resources most important to what you’re passionate about, would impart connections you’d cherish forever and provide an environment you’d thrive in—don’t let it go.

Hold onto what will bring you joy now, not what’s ripe for a return on investment in two, 10 or 40 years. Even if it takes some searching, find what’s exciting for you instead of subscribing to some invisible and unattainable standard of success. 

To my fellow students, to those anxiety-ridden and a wreck over application deadlines, past and coming: we can’t control where we’re accepted, but we can choose where we go with care, consideration and conviction. Most importantly, we can choose what our future university means to us. We can choose the “why.”

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