Admissions Impossible?

By Nick Brokaw

I was born in the wrong year.

Regardless of all the hard work I have put into my high school studies, regardless of how much time I have spent preparing for my applications, it all boils down to the aforementioned fact.

I know, it sounds like an easy excuse for me to complain, but really, the numbers don’t lie.

When my brother applied to UCLA in 1999, he was one of roughly 35,000 applicants. Of those applicants, around 10,000 were admitted. Now let’s fast-forward eight years. With nearly the same number of slots available, more than 50,000 students applied.

So, to all you high school seniors planning on applying to UCLA, I have got some advice for you. Don’t even consider applying there. I mean come on, who are you kidding? UCLA’s football team is inconsistent, and just because you’re in LA doesn’t mean that you are actually going to be in a movie. What all you seniors want is a school that’s not even close to the ocean. How about some place lovely where cows outnumber the people?

Alright, so now that I’ve gotten my agenda out of the way, I need to face the harsh truth: I’m just a potential casualty of the baby-boomer generation.

So, with these grim facts in mind, I recently logged online to formally begin my UC application “experience.”

As I sat on my computer trying to think of a user name and password that I’d remember, it finally occurred to me that all of this was real. After all the classes, all the finals and all the hours I have spent studying for tests – this was the document that would determine my fate.

But before I got started, I did something that I should not have done: I took a look at the profile of the 2007 admitted class.

Of all the things I had to do, why did I do that? Seeing the highly competitive SAT scores and GPAs – they’re starting to get absurd. But just to make myself feel better, I scrolled down to the 1999 freshman class profile to see the statistics from my brother’s year. And as I expected, those numbers were considerably lower. It’s as though over those eight years UCLA has experienced what I like to call “brain inflation.”

Who’s to say next year’s numbers won’t increase even more? Pretty soon applicants will have to get a 2500 on the SAT for even a chance to be admitted.

But while I can joke and complain forever about the ultra-competitive admissions process, the sad truth is that this is my reality.

As it currently stands, I’m still waiting to hear the results of my latest SAT test with the hope that I will increase my chances of admission that much more. And as I anxiously wait for the results, I am busy studying away for the SAT subject tests.

It’s funny the way this process works. Currently, I am more concerned about college than high school. And frankly, I have another eight months of high school finals and AP tests to go. But for now, I’ll happily use college as an excuse whenever my parents ask me if I have finished my homework. I guess that’s a good thing, right?

Brokaw is a senior at Rio Americano High School in Sacramento.