Yale 1L Bemoans ‘Almost-Darwinian’ Admissions Race and the Not-So-Nice Winners
A first-year law student at Yale takes on her Ivy League colleagues who don’t always practice what they preach about making the world a better place.
In an opinion column published by the Washington Post, student Amelia Rawls writes that her sister, who just won acceptance at an Ivy League college, asked her what students at top colleges are like. Rawls, who attended Princeton as an undergraduate, realized she was disturbed by her answer.
“These youths live a life of superlatives, a life in which being No. 1 is not just an aspiration but the status quo,” she writes. “They can be inspirational, and I am lucky to be able to learn from them. But they are not always nice people.”
Rawls explains what she means by being nice. It means sharing notes with a student who is sick or lending a textbook to a friend who doesn’t have one. Students who turn their backs on their colleagues or the needy may at the same time tout their volunteer service on school applications.
“Sometimes some of these students will denounce world hunger but be unfriendly to the homeless,” she says. “They will debate environmental policy but never offer to take out the trash.”
These not-so-nice people rise to the top on the backs of nicer students who let the climbers steal the spotlight, she says. “I wonder if our society is crippling itself by subjecting its youths to an almost-Darwinian college selection process.”
A Princeton website says Rawls wrote her senior thesis on the problems caused by linking U.S. refugee and asylum policy to general foreign policy goals.
A hat tip to Above the Law, which posted Rawls’ column.
