News Anchors Go Too Far

Choosing what college to go to is one of the most stressful situations a highschooler, and adolescent in general, can go through. For Michael Brown, the tensions were higher than most. The world continues to watch as he heads off to college in the fall of 2018.

They do say that you can’t please everybody.

A young high schooler was accepted into 20 colleges, but some news anchors weren’t quick to congratulate him.

Michael Brown applied to 20 different colleges and was accepted to all of them. Local Fox anchors had an opinion or two about his choice to apply to so many schools. Many were upset about the things the anchors said, both nationally and locally.

Brown is a senior at Lamar High School in Texas. He is graduating this summer with a 4.68 GPA and a whopping 1540 on his SAT, which converts to an approximate 34 on the ACT. Brown has also won many different awards and honors throughout his school career. “I’m jealous; that’s awesome,” said junior Kemper Barr.

His high school accomplishments made him more than eager to apply to prestigious colleges. And with those previous mentioned accomplishments, these prestigious schools were very excited to accept him.

Brown was accepted to all 20 colleges he applied to, as well as offered a full ride to all of them. Among these schools were Ivy Leagues like Harvard and Yale.

Some of Brown’s friends and family recorded him getting acceptance letters to various colleges, and it quickly went viral. One of these videos was picked up by a news channel, Fox News.

Anchors Holly Morris and Sarah Fraser accused Brown of “taking a spot from someone else who worked really hard.” They went on to say that he’s just unnecessarily waitlisting other kids and being obnoxious. It seemed they had no positive remarks to make about the seemingly genius student.

Among going viral in the news world, it also quickly went viral on Twitter. Many people were extremely upset about what the anchors said.

“This is straight up, poorly coded, bigotry,” said Twitter user @adityasood.

Another user went on to say that if someone is struggling financial wise, it may be a good idea to apply to a lot of schools because you never know which one will help more in that department. “It makes sense to cast a wide net and apply it to 20 schools with tuitions so bad these days,” said @coeurdartichaut.

Yet another point Twitter brought up was how consuming the application process, especially for Ivy League schools, can be. “This was hours and hours of work put in,” wrote @erythromancy. @Arrowkid21 also noted how many prestigious schools require multiple essays to be written for their application.

Around Bullitt East, students seemed to agree with the Twitter community.

“I think you can apply to as many colleges as you want; it shouldn’t matter,” said senior Tristen Preston. He went on to say that if he would’ve applied himself as much as Brown, he wouldn’t feel bad about turning in so many applications.

Sophomore Kamryn Lane agreed. “You shouldn’t try to make someone feel guilty for how hard they worked; I know he worked his butt off for that,” said Lane.

Lane plans on going to University of Louisville, but will probably apply to other colleges to be sure she has a back up plan. “It’s good to keep your options open,” said Lane.

“I’m just wanting to know what college he finally decided to go to,” said Barr. Barr will soon be in Brown’s shoes, as senior year is approaching fast, with less than two months until summer break.

Brown told Newsweek in an interview that his main contenders were Stanford, Harvard, Yale and Georgetown, and he’ll announce his decision on April 30. Regardless of his pick, it’s apparent that lots of people around America will be cheering him on.