While a college education is certainly not what it used to be, the process of applying to college is still a great opportunity for students to gain real world experience. Students learn the importance of marketing one’s skills and qualifications to a prospective “employer,” then either receive an offer (acceptance), or are passed over (rejection) for someone that institution feels is a more qualified candidate.
Enter David Hogg, the 18-year-old Parkland, Fla., shooting survivor who has become a fixture in the mainstream media for his willingness to attack the National Rifle Association, politicians who support the Second Amendment, and responsible gun owners across America. He recently took time out of his crusade for gun control to highlight the fact that he got rejected from four University of California schools, including UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, and UC Irvine.
“It’s been kind of annoying having to deal with that and everything else that’s been going on but at this point, you know, we’re changing the world,” Hogg said. “I am not surprised at all in all honesty.”
Following this revelation, Hogg was venerated by CNN host Alisyn Camerota as she breathlessly asked him, “What kind of dumbass colleges don’t want you?”
According to Hogg, he currently possesses a 4.2 GPA and an SAT score of 1270. In 2017, UCLA received 102,232 applicants, admitting just 16.1 percent of them, with an average GPA of roughly 4.2, average SAT Reading scores of 640-730 and average SAT Math scores of 640-770.
In other words, Hogg is roughly equivalent to the average student admitted to UCLA — with a slightly lower SAT score, combined with the fact he is an out-of-state student.
When conservative commentator Laura Ingraham chose to point this out, Hogg lashed out at her, enlisting the help of his Twitter followers and mainstream media outlets by threatening to boycott the sponsors of Ingraham’s Fox News show, “The Ingraham Angle,” if they failed to stop advertising with her. As a result, Ingraham announced a planned vacation for the coming week to spend time with her family and take a break from the show after she lost 18 sponsors.
It doesn’t take a genius to understand that Ingraham – an Ivy League graduate – wasn’t attacking Hogg for his academic credentials or for getting rejected by his top college. Rather, she was pointing out the fact that he chose to utilize his fame and CNN airtime to bring this topic into the debate, with implications that a gun control activist might have trouble getting into a top college. This was the implication, and Camerota has shamelessly egged Hogg on.
Regardless of whether or not Hogg manages to get into his top college or not, college rejection is an important lesson in how to respond to letdown or failure.
The right way to respond is to either accept an offer from the next best school – of which he has been accepted into several – or to take a gap year and reapply, which Hogg has indicated he plans to do. The wrong way to handle rejection is to attempt to use one’s fame to attack their way into getting a University acceptance by demonizing a television commentator.
While it may make him feel better and pressure a small number of advertisers to leave the show, any worthwhile college will not perceive this as a valuable skill for the real world.
