Why TikTokers are pretending they got into Harvard
If it seems like more people are getting into Harvard than usual, blame TikTok.
In recent months, the popular social media app has been overrun with videos of users young and old satirically playing the part of someone who got accepted into the nation’s most competitive and prestigious university.
“Pretending the baby got into Harvard because we are bored,” says one January post, which shows two women and a small baby standing in front of a computer screen while the song “Latch” by British musician Sam Smith plays in the background.
“Pretending nonna got into harvard because we’re bored,” says another video, depicting an elderly woman vigorously clapping after she mimes opening an acceptance email.
It’s not just Harvard. Stanford University, which shares a single-digit acceptance rate, was also the target of similar mockery in TikTok videos. Posts about Yale and Princeton have notched hundreds of likes, too.
And it’s not just babies and grandmothers doing the pretending, either. In the TikTokverse, dogs and birds are preparing to pack their bags for top colleges as well, tuition be damned.
The trend appears to have started with a TikTok video posted just before Christmas. The influencer Angelo Marasigan wrote the original “pretending i got into harvard because we’re bored” caption on Dec. 17, and the internet went wild. Marasigan’s video has nearly 40 million views and more than 5 million likes.
“Is it that HARD to get into Harvard?” one user commented on the initial post, to which another replied: “kinda.”
Trend follows years of scrutiny of selective college admissions
The trend comes after years of heightened scrutiny of the types of universities that admit the fewest students – or, as Akil Bello calls them, “highly rejective” colleges.
Bello, an education policy expert, coined the term "highly rejective” several years ago on social media, and it took off. There’s rising criticism of the admissions process at schools like Harvard, he said, which may be why the latest TikTok trend could be resonating with people in the same way his phrase “highly rejective” struck a chord.
“The TikTok videos may be a reflection of the students,” he said, “and their social-media approach to questioning the value of some of these institutions.”
Though applications to the most competitive colleges haven’t slowed in recent years, lawsuits and major scandals have uncovered new details about their long-secretive approaches to admissions. A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted in the wake of the 2019 Operation Varsity Blues scandal showed overwhelming public skepticism of the college admissions process after it was revealed that celebrities and business tycoons were gaming the system with bribes. Fewer than one in five Americans at the time said they believed the college admissions process was fair.
More recently, massive lawsuits have forced rich schools to reveal uncomfortable truths about their admissions policies. Emails and internal records made public through court filings in December illustrated rampant preferences for donors and the children of alumni at some of the wealthiest and most selective institutions.
New findings published this month by James Murphy, the deputy director of higher education policy at Education Reform Now, show fewer colleges favor children of alumni in the admissions office. Though schools argue that utilizing so-called “legacy admissions” helps them fundraise for things like financial aid, critiques of the practice have grown in recent years, prompting a wave of state-level bans, including a law signed by California's governor in September.
“Legacy is just symptomatic of this idea that elite institutions are disconnected from regular people’s lives,” he said. “And that leads to things like making fun of the whole idea of getting accepted.”
Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why TikTokers are pretending they got into Harvard
