The Southern View’s Guide to College Application

• The Common App: Now significantly easier thanks to the inclusion of much more straightforward questions. You’ll probably have to lie, though.
• Affirmative action: Not sure what it is, but it sounds pretty good.
• The College Board: Bunch of poop headed jerks up in their ivory tower, who are they to judge me!?!
• Safety schools: A sure-fire backup that you’ll go to if you decide to keep on living should all of your top picks reject you as your entire freaking future blows up in your face.
• Reach schools: Dream on.
• Punching an Alligator in the Face, Killing Your Father After Slowly Realizing he was Planning to Build an Ultimate Super Weapon, or Falling in Love With Someone you Originally Disliked in a Madcap Romantic Adventure: The only essay topics that could possibly show the admissions people something new.
• Heritage, Family, Childhood, Sacrifice, Bravery, or Being Yourself: Topics that every admissions official has read five hundred essays on.
• Area of Study:
• English: Say you want to major in this on any college interview and watch your interviewer’s face drop with disappointment.
• History: Nice try, bub.
• Creative Writing: You’ve got to be kidding me.
• Theater: C’mon.
• Theatre: Well now you’re screwed and pretentious.
• Social Sciences: Warmer.
• Regular Sciences: Almost there!
• STEM: Bingo!
• The Ivy League: Oh, that tantalizing light in the distance, so close yet somehow always out of reach. That gleaming golden city of light on the infinite horizon. Yet you chase it with all your might, pour every resources, every hidden reserve of strength, every ounce of your being into catching it. And who knows, maybe some day your lifeless husk, mangled beyond recognition by the journey, will find its way to the gilded steps? This is, of course, assuming you’re not a legacy.
• Stanford: See The Ivy League.
• Activities: As a general rule of thumb, admissions officials will assume any activity they don’t recognize is impressive. Evidence suggests this, as every single Thnokball Team Captain has gotten into Harvard.