Hasnain says:

This was a really important read. The author explains their struggles with mental illness; and calls out the feedback they got from being rejected at Yale. And then how they got admitted at Harvard after leaving their struggles out of the essay. This also has opinions and analysis of how this affects a lot of other current students.

“Effective admissions policies require grasping how mental illness manifests in different students’ lives. The same crisis that leads to an outpouring of support for a wealthy child might cause a foster youth to be sent to a locked facility, prescribed antipsychotics and forced to change schools. Stigma varies widely across communities, affecting how teenagers view their struggles and what leeway they get from adults. Some kids are far less likely to be diagnosed and treated; others receive superfluous labels and get overmedicated. Understanding these disparities is crucial in the face of worsening adolescent mental health and ever more competitive standards at the colleges that produce an outsize share of leaders.

For a decade, I believed my story was an anomaly, but every year that seems less and less true. There are so many young people unable to hide their crises. We all lose out if this disqualifies them from a better future.”

Posted on 2022-12-31T23:38:15+0000