Should I Share My College Results on Social Media?

Dealing with the Complicated Emotions of the College Process in a Public Forum.

As of May 1st, this year's college process is officially over. Students are committing to colleges and sharing their news. As a result, high schools have created "college decision" Instagram accounts where students announce via social media what college they will attend in the fall. The comments are flooded with "congratulations!" "so deserved," and "proud of you!" These Instagram accounts convey that it's finally over; we did it. We did do it. However, many students, including myself, are still working through residual anxiety and depression from the experience. For many, college applications were an emotionally overwrought process and it takes time to heal. With long months of uncertainty followed by heartbreaking disappointments, we are rightfully still processing. 

Sydney Yuille, a student at NEST + m High School in Manhattan, who will be attending Johns Hopkins University next year, said, "Looking back on my college process, I was more vocal about it than most people. I applied to a lot of Ivies and told a lot of people about it, which was my biggest regret. Everyone told me I could do it and expected me to get it. When I got the results back, and I was rejected, I was disappointed in myself, and on top of that, everyone was asking, 'Did you get into Harvard?'" She said she felt like she was "settling," which was a source of shame and disappointment. "On Ivy Day, I felt confident; I had already gotten into Johns Hopkins and had good interviews. When I didn't get into any of them, I was like, what do I do now? It was not what I expected, and I didn't know what to do. My parents were very happy with the schools I got into, but I wasn't, so I felt like I was settling." Furthermore, "I assigned so much of my self-worth into getting into an Ivy League school. Growing up, I always thought I was the smart one, and that's what I had to offer, and not getting into these schools humbled me." With many of her friends attending Ivies, she said, "I do not want it to be a competition, but I can't help but compare myself." While this may seem like a personal battle, it is perpetually reinforced by the adults in our lives. Sydney noted, "I was leading tours for incoming NEST + m students, and the parents asked what schools we were going to. I said Johns Hopkins and they all cheered, but when the student beside me said Yale, it was like I was invisible. The parents only wanted to hear from the student that got into the Ivy League."

When this sentiment is applied to social media, specifically on college decision pages, it creates a three-box grid for this form of comparison. Comparison among teenagers is only natural, but social media amplifies it. Sydney says, "My main problem with the decision page is that you can't help but make assumptions about people and their worth based on where they are going. But in reality, we didn't choose these schools; they randomly chose us. I've found that someone who goes to a CUNY can be just as brilliant as someone at Harvard." There are tens of thousands of students in Sydney's position, and many are very disappointed with their options. These college decision accounts are viewed as a celebration, but they are only truly celebrations for those who feel content and satisfied with their outcomes. Even seeing others content with their college, regardless of the school, can be a source of pain and jealousy when you are not. While Instagram accounts can serve as a vehicle for congratulations, is celebration possible without social media? The desire to share college results stems from the same reason we feel the desire to post anything on social media: Firstly, to boast in a socially acceptable way, and secondly, and arguably more prominently, because everyone else is doing it. After all, the success of social media platforms hinges on the human tendency to follow the herd. Sharing results is a personal decision, and many students are excited and eager to share. However, we must ask ourselves, to what extent am I contributing to a culture of comparison? Moreover, is posting something I want to do, or am I doing it because everyone else is? Instagram is so second nature to us that we often fail to think critically about what it means to post. Perhaps it is too early to announce our results publicly with all the complex feelings involved. On the NEST + m decision's Instagram, there is a photo of Sydney smiling, holding the Johns Hopkins flag. Regardless, she said, "I took my college picture three weeks before I posted it, and I really did not want to post it. I didn't feel ready, but I felt social pressure too." Social media consistently fails to convey the nuances of being human, and this was a very nuanced and complex experience for students and their families. Smiling and holding up a flag can feel inauthentic and unrepresentative of the emotional turbulence we underwent. 

A fellow senior at NEST + m, Maya Cruz, said, "I am very reluctant to congratulate my friends on their college posts on social media. It becomes about the comparison. You see that this person got into an institution for some intangible reason, and you ask yourself, 'What did this person have that I don't?'" Maya also says, "The more we perpetuate this narrative of superiority, the more kids in the future are going to sacrifice their own emotional well-being to win this competition." The college decision posts are shared and reposted, and the grades below us—not just within our school but across the country—are fed the same narrative that we were; The college process is a fair system that rewards the brightest students. Moreover, the college decision accounts present a skewed set of data. Only students who are proud of their college post, and so this leaves many kids who are unhappy and unsatisfied with their choices out of the picture. Thus students younger than us are given a false representation of what the process looks like and what they should expect. Once again, the cycle of shame and insecurity repeats itself.

We often think of social media as only a reflection of our identity, but as a generation raised with social media, we have subsumed it as part of our identity in many ways. Rather than social media reflecting our real lives, our lives should reflect social media. On the same token, the colleges that students attend have become more central to their identity in recent years than before. Ms. Anna Swann-Pye, NEST + m's AP Literature teacher, says, "Watching students go through the college process is really complicated. On the one hand, I love the celebrations and excitement. I feel so proud of everyone and want my students to be proud of themselves — they deserve that. On the other hand, I've watched as college news has become more and more integral to my student's understanding of themselves. College is an accomplishment and a necessary step (an exciting one!), but it's no more a part of an identity than high school is. It's just a place, not a facet of your personhood." In many cases, colleges serve as an external source of identity for students, and posting it on social media solidifies that identity. I am guilty of this myself. For a long time, I believed that college was a signifier of who I was; the name emblazoned on my sweatshirt said something about my intelligence and beliefs. Ms. Swann-Pye elaborates, saying, "I think there are nuances to the college process (both the pain and the excitement of it) that aren't captured in the retelling of it — in how it's presented on social media, or how it's represented to the underclassmen. There's something that gets lost about the complexity of the entire year." 

In the hope of creating more transparency around the pain involved in this process, I want to share my own experience. I initially hoped to stay in New York and attend Barnard College, so I applied early decision. There were many reasons I loved it, it is in my home city, and it is an all women’s college, but truthfully, I think I idolized it for its Columbia affiliation. When I was rejected in December, I was devastated and cried for days. It felt like being rejected as a woman and a New Yorker, two of the most fundamental components of my identity. It took me many months to distance myself from this belief, and it required professional help from my therapist. Cut to May, and I am preparing to move to Montreal to attend McGill. I am happy and excited about McGill. However, I've learned how dangerous it is to over-identify with any university, especially when I have yet to attend it. 

The aftermath is complicated even for students who received the outcome they hoped for. Dani Brown, a senior at Frank Sinatra High School in Queens, applied regular decision to her top choice, The University of Southern California (USC). Dani says, "In the months leading up to decisions, I became a version of myself that was so paranoid. I told myself I couldn't talk about USC with friends. The anticipation of the decisions was the hardest part. I didn't like how I was handling the stress, but I didn't know any other way to do it." Finally, in March, Dani received the news that she was accepted to USC; however, she said, "I was so nervous that even after I received a "yes," the nerves didn't go away. I thought that getting into USC would truly solve all of my life issues, but in fact, it did not." There is still a lot of residual stress and anxiety that we are undergoing after the fact, and we are still dealing with it. 

Dr. Tanya Bannister, P.h.D., a psychologist based in New York, says, "The college admissions process is the most competitive and challenging it has ever been for young people. And while I understand schools, students, and parents wish to celebrate the efforts and outcomes of their students through announcing outcomes on Instagram or Facebook, it is important to recognize that some students have a complicated emotional response to their final choice for college at this juncture, both because the process is set up to be absurdly competitive (with many aspects of actual admission not in a student's control), and because the choice itself is likely one of profound significance for the student." When considering the added social media layer, Dr. Bannister argues that "Not every student feels ‘celebratory’ at this juncture, and that is completely normal. It would be helpful for guidance counselors and schools to more deeply validate the potential mental health challenge of the college application process for students and to acknowledge that a pantheon of feelings is often present and co-existing at the acceptance stage—joy, anger, grief, relief, disappointment, or anxiety. Encouraging students to go at their own pace with the acceptance process without feeling pressured to ‘fast forward’ to a particular emotional experience (especially via a very public forum such as the internet) is more likely to result in a healthier and more introspective transition to college.” 

Considering the delicate emotional state of many students, it is imperative that we consider ways in which proud students and parents can celebrate their accomplishments while also being sensitive to the students who are not feeling celebratory. Dr. Bannister suggests we "focus on an internal locus of control—focusing on the EFFORT all students have made in this challenging process vs. the specific outcome or school. "Look what WE have all gone through and how we succeeded in this crazy competitive year!" All students can share in that, and it breaks the illusion that someone who has gotten into their top school did any more than a student who got into their third choice. De-emphasizing the outcome vs. what students all were able to control (their effort)." Different students have different responses to this experience, and this social media parade of college decisions encourages kids to have a public display regardless of what they feel internally. Reframing how we celebrate collectively and focusing on the shared effort rather than the individual outcomes would be more conducive to students' mental health overall. We need to have an ongoing conversation about the emotional complexity involved in this process and create more transparency about how difficult it can be, so we can share in that struggle and help the classes below us. Only showing the final results oversimplifies the intricacies of this process. The real danger of social media is its tendency to oversimplify things. We should be cautious of our impulse to post and reshare without thinking beforehand about how it may impact the people viewing it and our communities. Lastly, parents of students need to consider to what extent they are inviting this singular view of success into their homes; if they are more likely to listen to the student going to Yale over a student going to Johns Hopkins. They must examine how much the brand name of the school means to them before their children absorb this value system and create expectations for themselves. All in all, sharing and participating in social media "celebrations" is a very individual choice. Still, as a whole, we need to consider the impact that it can have on our overall sense of self-worth and well-being and how it affects others.