What if your beloved mother turns on you? What if your beloved school turns on you? What if everyone around you turns on you? These questions do not just live in imagination but happen to an ambitious and promising Rhodes Scholarship winner- Mackenzie Fierceton. In “How an Ivy League School Turned Against A Student, ” A University of Pennsylvania graduate, Mackenzie Fierceton, is accused of lying on her application for college and Rhodes Scholar in which the University of Pennsylvania questions her status of being a first-generation student and the authenticity of her use of language in her college application essay. To Mackenzie, she has never thought of “being faulted for not having suffered enough” from her growth environment where she encountered sexual harassment and domestic violence but it is because of such an experience, MacKenzie realizes the cruelty and inhumanity of college admission and the meaning of family.

To college applicants, Ivy league schools mean privilege, recognition, and reputation, and these schools have attracted hundreds of thousands of students to apply each year, competing for only around 15, 000 seats in these elite institutions. Mackenzie who was benefited from the favorable first-generation policy during the college admission process and won her seat at the University of Pennsylvania would never think about her university would accuse her of lying about her status of being a first-generation student for the reason that the university “is so focussed on what box she checked, and not the conditions—her lack of access to the material, emotional, and social resources of a family—that made her identify with that box.” Being raised in a violent environment, Mackenzie underwent unfair and inhumane treatment from her biological mother, Carrie Morrison, where Mackenzie was referred to as “a piece of sh*t” when she was only in middle school. Despite all the evidence which shows the irrelevance of Mackenzie’s mother in her life, The University of Pennsylvania still held the belief that as the mother of Mackenzie holds an undergraduate degree, she could not be considered a first-generation student whatever her growth environment is. I have always thought of college as a continuation of high school, middle school, and of kindergarten where people really care about me as a person. Thinking of what happened to Mackenzie, colleges become somewhat inhumane to me that students are judged by their capability to repay colleges and the only thing the colleges care about seems to be themselves. With all the compliments we put on universities, we fight for utilitarian benefits that universities grant us but seem to forget the meaning of education.

To most people, family is never the thing they chase but the thing they are born with. In such a world of variety and diversity, there is a colossal group of people who have never experienced what family is like. Even though born into an upper-class white family, Mackenzie has never felt like having a family since her biological parents divorced when she was 6. Not to mention the bruises Mackenzie has on her body, Mackenzie experienced a dreadful childhood where she was verbally insulted and physically beaten by her biological mother after leaving this appalling house, Mackenzie moved into a foster family, and not until that did she realize the meaning of family which she described as “the people that support you, look out for you, & love you unconditionally.” If you ask me what a family is, I am certain that I would answer that it is a place where my parents and siblings live. Many people, including myself, have formed an ideology that we take the love and care of our family for granted and believed that our family would always be there, no matter what. It is true that family would always be there for us but this will not be true if you fail to cherish your family with kindness and love and it is not true that everyone has a family in a real sense, so always remember to treat others the way you should treat your family.