This year, Princeton received over 25,000 applications from eager high school seniors with their hearts set on spots in next year’s freshman class. Over the past few weeks, admissions officers scrutinized each application down to the punctuation to determine which lucky eight percent would make it into the Class of 2018. So as University officials filtered through these files, faced with life-altering decisions—the future of so many kids at the mercy of their best judgment—they played a drinking game.
- Every time you find a valedictorian, take a drink.
- Every time you find a 2400 SAT score, take a drink.
- Every time you find a legacy, take a drink.
- Every time you find a legacy with a relative in the class of ‘69, take a quick break to draw a picture on the application, then take another drink.
- Every time you find an Eagle Scout, take a drink.
- Every time you find a Cub Scout, make a note to put a scratch-and-sniff sticker on his acceptance letter, then take a drink.
- Every time you find an applicant from New Jersey, round up everyone in the office to sit in the West College hot tub and do shots together.
- For every applicant that talks about his or her experience with Key Club, take a drink.
- For every applicant that talks about his or her experience with Glee Club, take a drink.
- For every applicant that talks about his or her experience with Fight Club, immediately reject them for breaking the first rule of Fight Club.
- For every applicant who intends to be a Woody Woo concentrator, take a drink.
- For every applicant who intends to be a math or physics concentrator, laugh.
- Every time someone uses the phrase “In the nation’s service and in the service of all nations,” take two drinks (one for national service and one for international service).
- For every applicant that lists Woodrow Wilson or John Nash as his or her hero, take a drink.
- For every applicant that lists Kim Kardashian or Kim Jong-un as his or her hero, write a quick letter of concern to the applicant’s parents, then take a drink.
- For every applicant that lists you as his or her hero, get up on the table, scream “I AM THE GREATEST MOTHERFUCKER IN ALL OF PRINCETON,” and force all your colleagues to take a drink in in your honor. Then pat yourself on the back for being a good role model and take a drink yourself.
- For every potential engineer who mentions the Engineers Without Borders chapter at Princeton, take a drink.
- For every potential engineer who mentions the Engineers Without Boners chapter at Princeton, search in your pile of applications for the next female applicant expressing interest in engineering and accept her.
- For every essay about overcoming a challenge, take a drink.
- For every essay about Miley Cyrus, go look at how many applications there are left to review, then run around West College singing the chorus of “We Can’t Stop” ironically.
- Every time you see Harvard or Yale instead of Princeton somewhere, discard the application.
- For every applicant that lists The Great Gatsby as his or her favorite book, stop for a moment and think about the poor high school student whose fate you hold in your hands and how we are all just beating on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Then take a drink.
– ACD ’16
