Tag: tryharding

Finally, some #TRYHARD answers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ABC7 Chicago: Gary, Indiana teen with “perfect 4.0 GPA” accepted into 126 colleges, amassing $9M in cumulative scholarship offers

Gary, Indiana must’ve never heard about Westlake High, because 126/$9M seems kind of mid in the grand spectrum of the #TRYHARD game.  Also, I put perfect 4.0 GPA in quotes above, because not long after discovering the Florida nerd with the 11.99 GPA, the whole concept of grade point averages has been blown out the door, and every number warrants questioning and examinations that nobody wants to have to do and it sucks to be a egghead teenager today in that regard.

Anyway, not that I really wanted to get back in the swing of documenting teen #TRYHARDs left and right like I did that one year, this particular story came of interest to me for one specific reason: it appears to have shed a little light on the whole #TRYHARD game, namely potentially answering one of the biggest questions I had about the game as a whole itself: how are all these kids able to apply to so many colleges without seemingly having to worry about those pesky things called, application fees?

Apparently, there’s a site/service, CommonApp, where there are 1,100 schools on the platform, so it’s apparently easy to make a profile and fling it out like Gambit to any and all schools available; many of which seemingly have no, or are willing to waive, those pesky application fees.  I don’t care to dig into just which schools are on the platform, but imma guess many notable and nameworthy ones, based on the cache of schools that have been mentioned by #TRYHARDs throughout the years.

Welp, that answers a lot of questions I’ve always had in regard to how these #TRYHARDs are applying to hundreds of schools.

Anyway, before I wrap on this post, a few things I want to clown on:

[They had] a perfect 4.0 grade point average and is ranked second in [their] class.

Second?  If they’re ranked second in the class, what does first place look like?  And why aren’t they making the news?

[They] did have to write about 30 essays to go with some of the applications. But [they] says it was worth it.

30 essays?  Oh the humanity!  Oh the strain, the labor, the exhausting ordeal!  Lmao, I could knock out 30 essays in a day, but then again, there’s nobody I know who has been writing as much and as long as I have, and even Jerry Seinfeld probably has taken more breaks than I have.  But if 30 essays was the cost for not having to pay application fees, I would’ve written 100 to not have had to pay for the 3 colleges I paid to apply to.

And in true #TRYHARD fashion, I can’t seem to find any intel on where they actually picked.  This article originally dropped in March, and decision day was back in May, but no information on where they ultimately chose, which goes to show that once the initial news of #TRYHARDing breaks, frankly nobody cares what happens afterward.

The ultimate high school #TRYHARD?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYP: Florida teen graduates high school with a mind-bending 11.99 GPA; prompts district to reexamine policy

Man, I thought I was a big deal when I was rocking a 3.8 GPA my senior year.  Meanwhile, this ubernerd is taking 44 AP classes, and college courses, completing their associate’s degree before finishing up high school, and I guess solved the meme-like riddle of how people can accumulate four years experience for entry level jobs.

Seriously though, when I was in high school, the defining standard of excellence was how close to a 4.0 GPA one could get to.  And in only the rarest of instances, you’d see kids nail that 4.0 or even exceed it by like 0.1 or 0.2 because of the two AP courses they took their senior year, and then they’re the class valedictorian.

But over the #SZNs of watching #TRYHARDs race across America at who can outdo others, we’ve witnessed ultra-competitive #TRYHARD students start notching GPAs that have crossed into the 5’s and even 7’s, en route to them being accepted into 162 colleges with accumulated scholarship offers eclipsing multiple millions of dollars.

And then we have this mensch down in Florida who attended George Steinbrenner High,* who somehow manages to get an astounding 11.99 GPA, and obviously the first question that comes to the minds of most rational observers, other than what a huge fuckin’ nerd, is, hoowwwwww???

*there’s a joke somewhere about how there’s actually a school named after the former, free-spending wheeling & dealing owner of the Yankees but I can’t figure one out

Don’t get me wrong, as obnoxious as the self-promotion and humble-bragging can get, I’m all for kids getting competitive over academics, as opposed to dumb TikTok trends or petty larcenies, because at least these brats might be learning some useful knowledge in their journeys, but hopefully they’re doing it because they want to be smarter, and not because it’s a route for internet notoriety.

Because as impressive as the feat was, I question the motivation behind it if the goal was merely to surpass the #TRYHARDs before them:

noting that [their] top aims were to “become valedictorian” and “break the state GPA record.” 

It’s worth mentioning that the Florida state GPA record before this kid was 11.84, so it’s not like this kid had broken into completely uncharted territory.  The academic policy was already busted, allowing kids to take questionably high and probably ethically risky course loads at young ages, it’s just that it’s now coming into question because it probably didn’t have the magnitude of spotlight on it previously.

But it does make me wonder if the kid really had the thirst for knowledge to take such a demanding course load, or if it was the equivalent of figuring out what he had to take in order to hit the XBOX achievement, and then going for solely that.

Considering the fact that they’re going to Duke, there’s always the innate possibility that the latter is very much in play.

The funny thing is, one of my knee-jerk reactions to the story was after picking up my jaw after seeing 11.99, was the obvious joke that although everyone might think it’s astounding at first to see such a high GPA, their minority (obviously) parents were probably completely unsold on it, and wondered why they didn’t get a full 12.0 GPA instead.  Like, what careless error on their quantum physics scantron did they get wrong that dropped them down to 11.99 and cost them the chance for immortality of 12?

Moving onto the proposed overhaul of school policy, #TRYHARD’s county realized the absurdity of someone being able to get such an astronomical GPA, and although they’re impressed, it sounds like they want to change things to where such shouldn’t be possible again; unsurprisingly, the nerd who just set the bar is all for overhaul, because it would effectively lock their GPA into immortality and basically prevent anyone in history from ever challenging it.  It’s like when a heel wrestler aspires to win a championship blet, so they can retire it and be the last guy in history books to hold it.

Either way, the question remains where this kid lands in the annals of #TRYHARDs.  The GPA and course load were of couse legendary, but without any background of how many colleges they applied to, how many they were accepted into, and how much scholarship offer money they amassed, we’ll never truly know.  But perhaps that’s the point, and much like they’re trying to slam the door on any future challengers to their record, by not disclosing the base counting #TRYHARD stats, we’ll never know where they stand in the rankings of ultimate #TRYHARDs.

Big-brain, 11.99 GPA logic.

Running it back to #TRYHARDSZN

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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.

Imagine how much it sucks being Asian and living in this high school zone

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NBC NY: high school in Long Island has 21 valedictorians

When I came across this story, the very first thing I noticed was the supporting image of the 21 kids all slated to be valedictorians of Jericho High School’s 2026 graduation class, was the obvious fact that there wasn’t a single, non-Asian continent face among them

I phrase my terminology deliberately because they’re not all just East Asians, but some that are from Central Asian countries, but the point is that it’s low hanging fruit to solely point out the obvious notion that when it comes to tryharding, nobody does it better than those from Asia. 

But then I thought to myself, man, how much does it suck to live in the Jericho High school zone; from the students’ perspective, it’s like no matter how good you think you were, there were 21 uber-achievers who never for a second let their foot off the gas since starting high school, and purportedly all somehow managed to get nearly identical perfect marks throughout their HS careers.

Among the 21 valedictorians, there’s got to be a tremendous amount of angst, jealousy, frustration and general animosity that none of them would admit to, but probably feels, on account of the fact that they worked their asses off for four years, and not only were they denied the honor of being the sole valedictorian, but gave to share it with not just one or two other achievers, but twenty other motherfuckers who tryharded just as much as they did.

And of course, let’s not forget the parents of these 21 tryhards, all of them being of various Asian descents, all of them wanting to be able to brag and micro-aggress to their peers and relatives over the intelligence and success of their kids, and being completely unable to, because thanks to the news and stories like this, most are probably innately aware that their outstanding child is nothing special because twenty other tryhards matched them in their abilities to tryhard.

All the same, I feel like I have to call bullshit on this whole thing. I have a hard time believing that 21 kids all got the exact same grade, and I feel like even if they did, there should’ve been all sorts of tiebreakers in place to weed out one true deserving valedictorian instead of crowning 21 nerds with participation trophies.

Like maybe the bar is lower than suspected, but there’s no way 21 kids all got like 97.83% on their aggregate grades, and even if they did, surely some of them had to have various extracurriculars and affiliations that would make them stand out among their academic peers.  Like if Johnny Tran and Vindaloo Nagrani both had exact grades, but Tran was a part of two clubs while  Nagrani wasn’t, then it’s an easy tie breaker in my opinion there.

No way everyone had identical qualifications to that granularity, and I feel like naming 21 kids all as valedictorians is a lazy and diluted honor, and none of these kids should really feel special because if they’re all valedictorians, then nobody is.

It makes me think of the episode of Saved by the Bell, where Jessie Spano thought she was a shoe-in for valedictorian but it turned out that Screech actually had a few decimal points on her, and until he ceded the role to her, he was the de facto valedictorian. Of course, the episode ends with somehow hidden genius Zack Morris speaking at the podium because of course he did but the point remains that when it comes to selecting a valedictorian, it really is serious business to the very end.

But speaking of these 21 kids, talk about how disappointing of a life it must have been, work hard, all gas no brakes, only to be lumped in with a bunch of others.  21 kids all living lives generally forfeit of high school hijinx, social lives, and being general teenagers, only to be stonewalled at the finish line because there were a bunch of others doing the exact same thing.

Makes me think of that film Booksmart, where the main girl who ends up valedictorian after basically living her life like these 21 tryhard kids, discovers that some of the other students in her class that are among the biggest slackers and underachievers, also managed to get into Stanford, Yale or got immediate jobs with Google, without the need to give up their lives entirely to get there.

Like I said earlier, they may all be buddy-buddy for the sake of the story, but there’s no way some of them aren’t harboring some deep seeded hater vibes for their fellow valedictorians, because one or two co-‘s would be understandable and plausible, but 21 is just pure bullshit coddling.

When it comes to college application time, my kids are now ‘white’

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYP: Chinese-American kid with near-perfect credentials and worthiness rejected by 16 out of 18 schools; family pursuing legal action

Firstly, I’m astounded how this story managed slip by me considering it appears to have originated back in March.  I suppose my Google notification queries weren’t adequate enough to have found about this kid sooner.  Secondly, regardless of the fact that I closed the book on #TRYHARDSZN2025, when I found out about the general context of this story, it couldn’t help but fire up the powder keg of my brain into wanting to write about this, because it really is a pretty astounding story.

We have a student who scored a 1590 on the SAT* and has a 4.42 GPA; typically those things alone are enough to get kids accepted into a whole slew of high-tier colleges.  On top of it, it’s a computer science whiz, was offered a job at Google when he was 13 because his code was so clean, he was assumed to have been an adult, and he founded his own e-signature startup, which really should have had most schools with strong computer science and/or engineering programs salivating to bring in a talent like this into their folds.

*I can’t help but wonder what question he possibly could have gotten wrong on the SAT to dock those ten points, and also wonder if his dad beat the ever-living fuck out of him for failing to miss a perfecto by one question

The problem is that he happened to be Chinese-American, and suddenly he went from diamond in the rough to being a gold flake in the sluice, and was turned down from nearly every school he applied to.  There are so many Asian whiz kids out there every single college application season, that it’s probably more exceptional to be mediocre and full of character like me, instead of being a monster in the books.  Even doing shit like creating startups, developing apps or other exceptional-sounding achievements have begun to sound cookie cutter amongst Asians and guys like this are left to pay the price for everyone being so fucking over-the-top #TRYHARD.

As Syndrome said in The Incredibles, when everyone is super, nobody will be.

And the thing is, it’s not like he was one of those #TRYHARDs that applied to every Ivy League school, in fact the only one he did apply to was Cornell.  With the exceptions of MIT, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, the meat of his applications made it clear that he was favoring staying out on the west coast, with most of his applications staying in California primarily; they’re all good, noteworthy schools, but they’re not Ivies, and they still turned this poor kid down.

So despite my knee-jerk reaction being fuck this kid and his seemingly overzealous dad for going straight to threatening lawsuits, because frankly this happens every year, where a few wunderkind Asian kids get the shaft during college application time, because frankly Asians always get the shaft when it comes to succeeding in America, I’m actually rooting for them to hopefully make some noise and either get the college system in the country to change their racist acceptance policies, or flat out admit that they do discriminate against Asians for being too good at school.

It’s the Asian Curve at its best-worst, where Asian kids basically start the SAT with a score of -200, because without it, they’re completely annihilating the competition, but on a college-application level where Asians are getting rejected by schools because they’re unofficially trying to fill diversity quotas, as opposed to having their student bodies look like the Beijing Olympics.

The funny thing is though, in spite of the bullshit of getting completely owned by the college acceptance system, the kid in question is going to be just fine.  He’s already been hired by Google, and his story, as well as his previous rub with the company, you know he’s already pulling in serious coin, and the ironic best part is that he’ll be getting to do so without having a modicum of student debt to pay towards.

Granted, his parents will forever be denied the Asian honor dream of having a son that went to Harvard or Yale, much less any college at this point, but in a few years once he’s made some money, and has bought them some high-end cars and paid off their mortgage, I’m sure their songs will sound a lot less flat.

All the same, it was an interesting story that really puts the spotlight on how much bullshit #TRYHARDSZN is capable of being, especially for those of kids who are stalwart Asians, because they have to know that their plight to get into top schools is going to be thirty-times harder than those students of different colors of skin, regardless of if anyone will admit to it or not.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: the transparency is refreshing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

FOX29: Bensalem teenager accepted into five Ivy League schools

I know I said I probably wasn’t going to be doing any more of these posts without just cause, but this one caught my attention due to the amount of transparency that was provided in the details, that I’m more likely to believe than I would have some of the other Ivy League #TRYHARDs.

This isn’t a story about how a #TRYHARD got the Ivy Sweep and got into all eight of the Ivies, but instead a story about how a kid had (supposedly) applied to seven of the Ivies, and gotten into five of them.  Two were waitlists, but the fact of the matter is that there were zero rejections among them all, which on paper sounds like a tremendous coup.

Now I don’t necessarily believe why someone would apply to just seven Ivies and leave one off, and in the case of this #TRYHARD, the one left out Ivy is Princeton, which means they’re lying and they applied to all eight, or for whatever specific reason, they have reason to beef with, and not apply to Princeton.

However the point remains that although she’s waitlisted to Harvard, she did get into Yale, which means even an Asian parent could find some solace in that monumental win, and on top of that, still got accepted into Columbia, Cornell, Brown and Penn, which are just the cherries on top for parental bragging rights.

Either way, the reason I felt some compulsion to write about this story is the fact that it hasn’t been outright fluffed to the point where they proclaimed that they got into five out of five Ivies, and actually have disclosed that they didn’t get into some of them.  A waitlist isn’t necessarily a rejection, but I’ve always been under the impression that it’s basically like 66% a no, since these are schools that are waiting on other #TRYHARDs to make a choice, and if they get bypassed, then they hit the waitlist and pull from there. 

And seeing as how with the Ivies, it’s probably nothing but other #TRYHARDs in all the pools of acceptances, waitlists and rejections, along with their absurdly low acceptance rates, I’m going to go ahead and say that those waitlists are basically no.  But seeing as how this #TRYHARD has already declared leaning towards Yale, it’s not like it really matters that she’s getting the axe from Harvard and Dartmouth, and might as well keep on saying fuck Princeton.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: This is point of the #SZN where I’m getting tired of doing this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know what it is with this #SZN, because we’ll going through stretches where there’s no news (at least that I can find) of any #TRYHARDs flaunting their college acceptances, and then a weekend will pass, and then bam, there’s suddenly multiple #TRYHARDs that have emerged and the news outlets will have said that these have been reported since two weeks ago and I’m like wtf.

Anyway, because we’re at the point of the #SZN where I’m getting tired of writing about these #TRYHARDs unless they’re truly exceptional, these next #TRYHARDs have the unfortunate distinction to being lumped into an aggregate post, because frankly none of them are particularly exceptional compared to some of the other #TRYHARDs of the #SZN, and I don’t feel like dedicating an entire post to each and every one of them.

WIFR: Louisiana teen accepted into 75 schools, amassing over $1M in scholarships

Nothing out of the ordinary here.  No SAT scores listed, no GPA listed, no extracurriculars listed.  Just a 27 on the ACT which is impressive, but just 75 school acceptances, and just $1M in scholarships is pretty low in comparison to some of the other #TRYHARDs of the #SZN.  That’s basically a $13K per acceptance average, which wouldn’t even be a year at community college, given the escalating prices of tuition and school expenses.

Naturally, she’s going with the HBCU that in all likelihood has given her a free ride, but hey free education is always a win, so who really cares what I think anyway.

MSN: Austin, Texas teen accepted into 22 schools, amassing over $1M in scholarships

Compared to the aforementioned girl from Louisiana, $1Mish out of just 22 acceptances is a far high average, at $45.5K per acceptance, but in the #TRYHARD game it’s not just about the average, as much as it is the sheer volume of acceptances, which makes this one kid very much average in the grand spectrum of the game.

But the article is interesting in that it not only discloses that he got into 22 schools, it said out of 24 applications, so the #TRYHARD actually did suffer a little bit of rejection.  However, for as high-character as this kid seemed as far as grades, extracurriculars and altruistic side-hustles, seems like a low bar to have only applied to just 24.  I feel like if this guy truly #TRYHARDed and applied to 155 schools, he’d probably have gotten into like 140 of them, and amassed $6M in scholarships.

And for such low ambition, boy is but an aggregate footnote in the #SZN.

NBC41: Georgia teen accepted into 110 colleges, earning $5.2M in scholarship money

I think it’s safe to say that no matter what comes from the rest of #TRYHARDSZN2025, there’s no place where the game is played harder anywhere in the country as it is in Georgia.  It’s not even just a Southside Atlanta thing either, because we’ve had several documented #TRYHARDs from various other Georgia towns like this one, where they’re shooting for the moon and applying to every school under the sun, and succeeding.

110 colleges and $5.2M isn’t the biggest haul of the #SZN, but it’s also nowhere near the smallest, and it absolutely obliterates every  #TRYHARD that’s been found outside of the state.  She would probably be agitated if she ever found out about the girl in Georgia that cleared 155 and one in every state, but that’s what she gets for not #TRYHARDing enough.

What’s interesting is the factoid that of her 110 acceptances, it’s revealed that 86 of them offered scholarships, meaning 24 schools just simply said yes but no relo.  That being said, that clears up her average scholarship value at $60.5K per, which isn’t bad at all.  I’m going to assume that of the 24 schools that accepted with no offer, they’re probably the Power-5 conference schools that were the moonshots, and of the 86 that offered up some coin, these are the more average-tier schools, and seeing as how she’s already committed to Mercer, seems to be a fairly accurate assessment.

But hey, nursing.  The country definitely needs more of them, and as most of us are very well aware, nurses are really the real nuts and bolts that hold the entire medical profession afloat.

TapIntoPatterson: New Jersey teen accepted into multiple Ivy League schools; but not all of them

Okay, my sub-thing this #SZN is calling bullshit on all the extra #TRYHARDs who don’t just shoot for the moon, but shoot for Milky Way, by aiming for nothing short of the Ivy Leagues.  So this kid, gets into Harvard and Yale, as well as Princeton, Columbia and Penn, all on full-rides no less.  But what about Brown, Cornell and Dartmouth?

I have a hard time believing anyone in this position is so selective of which Ivy League school they want to go to, that they don’t apply to all of them, and I feel like I have to call bullshit on any of these uber #TRYHARDs when they brag about getting into a select number of Ivy League schools, but not all of them, but pretending like they only applied to just the ones they got accepted into.

Don’t get me wrong, the backstory on this particular #TRYHARD is pretty impressive, and it seems apparent that he’s qualified for all of the schools he got into, but I just don’t buy that he only applied to only the five Ivies that he got accepted into, and it’s extremely easy for him, his family, or the news to twist the truth just a little bit to make him sound more impressive than he already is.  Everyone has a little bit of ego at some point, and there’s something less shiny than disclosing that he was “accepted into five of eight Ivies,” versus “accepted into five Ivy League schools.”

The funny thing though, is that this #TRYHARD’s desired academic path is all about robotics, engineering and mathematics.  I’m sure he could pursue such educational paths at any of the Ivy League schools, but when the day is over, this kid’s real optimal school is probably MIT.  Frankly, he should be taking into consideration what the kid from Texas did, and use his Ivy League acceptances as leverage to possibly get MIT to sweeten the pot for him, before also pulling an nWo and revealing his MIT shirt on selection day.

Maybe he already is.

But because he didn’t get into ALL the Ivies like the Texas #TRYHARD did, he’s relegated to shared aggregate acknowledgment in the brog.

And I think I might be done for the #SZN, barring some truly exceptional #TRYHARDing.  But never say never, because there’s little end to the lengths some of these #TRYHARDs #TRYHARD.