WSB: Henry County teenager accepted into 264 colleges, amassing allegedly over $17M in scholarship dollars
I’ll be the first to admit that I kind of shot myself in the foot when I decided to chronicle what I would coin as #TRYHARDSZN, where high school students from across the world but somehow mostly from Georgia and not just because I live here and they’re the news that’s spoon-fed to me the most, embark on this ridiculous rat race of applying to as many colleges as possible, and then silently competing against one another with how many acceptances, scholarship dollars, Ivies, or whatever cherry-picked convenient criteria they all want to flex in order to, well flex.
Because sure, going to college is a goal, but it’s become pretty apparent that it’s not the goal, when it comes all the kids that embark on this journey, and for jaded skeptics like me, it doesn’t so much impress or inspire me, so much as it rolls my eyes, raises questions, and wonder if anyone else sees just how misguided and missing the point the pursuit of college is, beyond trying to outdo one another at how much insufferable humblebragging they’ve earned the right to do.
The main question that usually comes top of mind to me is, what about the application fees? to which seems pretty obvious that all these #TRYHARDS are more than likely not paying any, because if any of them had to pay the $75-100 per I had to pay in 1999, which would probably be twice that today with inflation and white man greed, then they wouldn’t be applying to 270 schools.
But then I came across this story, about a #TRYHARD that wasn’t just the average run of the mill overachiever that applied to 75, got into 50, and amassed a respectable $3M and settled on an HBCU willing to give a completely free and clear ride. No, this is a #TRYHARD that saw the bar, wanted to beat the bar, and embarked on a mission to do it, and then succeeded.
The article makes it pretty clear that the pursuit of college wasn’t so much the objective as much as it was to surpass the previous national record of college acceptances of 231, naturally set by a fellow Georgian, based on all the quips and observations made about this legendary-tier #TRYHARD, who applied to 270, and got accepted into 264 of them, amassing allegedly over $17M in scholarships.
Now I don’t know where $17M ranks in cumulative scholarship dollars, but 264 acceptances is quoted as being a national record, breaking the previous mark of 231 acceptances set by a girl from Georgia in 2024. And it was a mark that this #TRYHARD was aware of:
(Their) initial goal was to reach 100 college acceptances. However, after reading about [previous #TRYHARD], a 2024 graduate of Liberty County High School who was believed to hold a national record of 231 college acceptances, [current #TRYHARD] decided to break the record.
So this kid decided to apply to nearly 200 more schools, all with the objective of breaking a meaningless record, probably unaware of the fact that the time in which they were accepted at a school and not making a decision so they can parade around humblebragging about their acceptances, kids that are waitlisted have to sit there with their dicks in their hands, waiting, while some insufferable asshole boasts about how many other schools they were accepted into alternatively.
Frankly, I’m curious about the six schools that this #TRYHARD didn’t get into. My knee-jerk reaction is that they must have been Ivy League schools, because they’re still for lack of a better term, considered the cream of the crop as far as collegiate learning is concerned, but the fact that they are left unmentioned leaves a lot of room to assume that they could be any other school from MIT, William and Mary to University of Idaho or University of American-Samoa.
And considering their “overwhelming” academic credentials of 3.8 GPA and a 1200 SAT, I’m inclined to believe it’s more likely the latter. Don’t get me wrong, I had a 3.8 GPA and a 1310 SAT, but I didn’t run track or do any internships, and everyone knows Asian folks get the hard-mode handicap that probably turned my credentials into like 2.9 GPA and 990 SAT and that I got into Virginia Tech because it was still pre-Michael Vick putting the school into the national spotlight.
What’s interesting but unsurprising is the fact that in the end, despite the fact that their herculean scores would have qualified them for basically a free ride at Georgia, or any other public college or university, #TRYHARD has decided to attend Knox College and actually pay money:
a private liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois. He has received a scholarship package worth about $260,000, meaning he owes about $5000 per term.
This typically deviates from the usual #TRYHARD journeys of people really phishing for where they could get the most free education as possible, but perhaps this one is just really eager to get the fuck out of the state. In some regard, I can relate.
But Galesburg?? I do know of Galesburg, because it’s the home of one of the best social game restaurants I’ve seen in the past decade, as well as where Chelsea and Yamir from 90 Day Fiancé live(d?), but the reality is that it doesn’t change the fact that it seems like a shitty suburb close enough to Chicago for residents to try and claim being from there, but far enough where Metro Chicago snobs want nothing to do with Galesburg.
Whatever though. This kind of #TRYHARDing was #TRYHARD enough to get me to actually feel the compulsion to address it, in spite of my general exhaustion of writing about them from last #SZN. And unless anyone comes out of the woodwork this late in the #SZN, hopefully I won’t have to touch on this hashtag ever again for the rest of the year.
