Students are no longer people. The second a child enters their freshman year of high school, they become nothing more than a brand. Colleges, private counselors, test-prep centers, schools, and other entities view these high schoolers as opportunities to capitalize on rather than as individuals with stories and lives. Due to society’s emphasis on attending top-tier universities, students begin to work towards building the most appealing brand very early on. Students do not allow themselves to explore their personality during high school because they are busy constructing a different one for universities. This dehumanization of students around the globe by universities and society throughout high school must be discussed as one of the most dire situations our world is currently facing.
When I entered high school, I quickly learned that if I didn’t compete, getting into a top college would be impossible. My family and I began to seek advice from those around us in order to learn how to navigate a system that was completely foreign to us. Everyone we spoke to only asked us one question: “What’s your brand?” No one asked me about my passions, interests, aspirations, or desires; the most important thing was simply my brand.
Even summer vacations, the part of the year every student looks forward to, are expected to be completely devoid of enjoyment and relaxation if one aspires to go to a competitive school. During one of my high school summers, my family chose to go to India to visit family and, instead of feeling excited to see my grandparents, whom I hadn’t seen in six years, I was panicking because I felt like my college application would suffer from a summer that colleges may look at as wasted. That summer, my grandmother suggested that I help out at her charity that sent underprivileged girls in India to school solely because of the panic I felt regarding my application. The first thought I had when I heard her suggestion was that helping underprivileged kids as a project would be seen as “overdone.”
Students are not commodities—they are people. They must be allowed to grow and flourish as individuals. We often forget that we own these universities, they don’t own us. As a student population, we must believe that we are more than just a couple of essay questions, a deposit, and a signature. We aren’t brands or products; we are students with passions, interests, aspirations, stories, lives, minds, personalities, and most importantly, hearts, and it is up to us to disrupt the current system by reminding it of exactly who we are.