Personal Experience

Here are two of the reasons I believe the political cartoon below is, unfortunately, quite true:

I applied to ten colleges total (UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCI, UCSB, UCSD, Loyola Marymount University, Pepperdine, USC, Yale, and Chapman). I was accepted to every school except USC and Yale. Only two people from my high school were accepted to USC, each with almost identical SAT scores and extracurricular involvement as me but with lower class rankings by 20 and 35 places respectively. They were not only accepted, but also awarded scholarships (one is African American and the other is Asian).

Scholarships and financial aid were a huge concern for me being that my family is not able to contribute financially to my education at all. After receiving acceptance to LMU but insufficient scholarship awards, I was actually told by LMU that although I was equally qualified for their full-tuition scholarship as one of my classmates, she received the scholarship for “diversity purposes” (she is Hispanic). A day after speaking with LMU on the phone I received an e-mail awarding me an additional $1,500 a year...coincidence? I think not.

For the writers of the political cartoon thread and me, the cartoon represents more accuracy than hyperbole. What do you think?