Open letter to Chinese American high school students

Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong

– John Denver

The jig should have been up when the Varsity Blues scandal broke. Oh was it delicious. Hollywood actresses, hedge fund managers, winery owners, real estate developers and other assorted muckety-mucks sneaking their low-watt spawn into elite colleges. The fraud was so absurd you couldn’t make it up.

Rich people Photoshopping their kids playing sports, paying for medical “stupid” certifications to get “special” proctoring, hiring a Harvard grad SAT ringer able to deliver any score you want. Stanford, Yale, Cornell, Georgetown and we are not going to make USC jokes because the school has gotten a lot better in recent years.

And that Chinese girl who paid US$6.5 million to get into Stanford. Did you see her hour-long “I got into Stanford” video on YouTube? Oh the burns in the comments. If you could only read Chinese. Epic!

Of course, the joke is really on us. Because four years later, elite American universities – with additional malfeasance in the interim – continue to command the same prestige, elicit the same anxiety and demand the same obeisance.

The college counseling business is as hot as ever. Some are reportedly charging over a million dollars for white-glove service starting in the 7^th grade, with a perfect record of admissions into HYPSM (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it).

And Asian Americans. Did you really think you scored a win when the Supreme Court scrapped affirmative action last year? The universities saw it coming a mile away and became test-optional well before the gavel came down. Underrepresented applicants are polishing their essays on how they’ve thrived in unsafe spaces while you are stuck with the surname Zhang.

So what can you