[WholeLottaTrash]

I'm not really sure what else to say. I hadn't even gotten a parking ticket at the time when I applied to colleges. It's not like I was a convicted felon or anything. I had good academics, and got rejected just about everywhere I applied to. I'm just voicing my frustrations.

The entire reason why my family moved to the US was because my parents believed that their kids could get a superior education. I've taken that to heart. It's hard to move thousands of miles for fleeting opportunism and feel like you failed. I spent all my time as a kid viewing education as a competition, studying for hours, and training to be better in every task compared to my peers. I viewed college admissions as proof that I did what I was supposed to correctly, but clearly I failed.

My sister grew up in the exact same cultural context. She was a good student, but her scores weren't close to the same as mine, and her outcome is far better. I don't really have much to say beyond that.

I'm closer to 30 than I am to 20. I wake up everyday feeling quite empty and unfulfilled, having seen and currently living the downstream effects of what I feel was a subpar formal college education, experience, and post-facto opportunities, irregardless of if I "deserved" a better one or not. It's not pleasant.

Lots of people far superior to me academically have had worse outcomes. Please don't be skeptical to things you read online because they don't make sense to you. Often times reality is stranger than fiction. I ended up going to a middling UC, having been rejected by better and worse ones.