My piece is a satire on rising college prices. I went for a casually professional point of view, like someone with a lot of experience with their line of work. I want you to question how much the examples given throughout the piece are relevant to the present day.
I hear you are thinking of going to MACS (don’t read it backwards) college! Before you can go to college here, we will need to set some base guidelines and tests. Since this is such a prestigious college, there are many steps and trials to do before you may be accepted.
First and foremost, college costs big money. In fact, it is well known that college prices are rising, so it’s safe to assume that the more expensive a college is, the better it is. Therefore, $100,000 should be an accurate model for the quality of our school. On top of that, you are required to live on campus for the entire year. However, living on campus costs extra, at approximately $50 per week. Finally, you are required to eat at the school cafeteria, which costs an average of $30 for each meal. Why do we need so much money, you might ask. And I am sure you would like to know.
Next on the list, you will be required to attend an interrogation (Editor’s note: TYPO, supposed to say interview, definitely a TYPO). In this step of the admissions process, you will have to answer a series of questions all related to anything other than academics, and then take a short personal multiple choice quiz that only contains answers that do not apply to you. After the quiz, we will allow you to ask one question to your interviewer, but they have the right to remain silent.
Since this is such a prestigious school, we can only accept the most talented students. To weed out the untalented students, we have a mandatory art competition. Each student must create a work of art that will look good on the front of my desk. However, there is a twist. You do not know what kind of art I am looking for. I will be very picky about what I accept, so good luck! At the end of this competition, I will accept 1-5 students as the champions. But, if you want to get into this school so badly, you can pay an extra $10,000, and I will make an exception.
Finally, once you have completed all of the steps in the admissions process, you will need to get some signatures from parents, teachers and other trusted people in your life. We will require at least 10 different signatures, and along with those signatures, we will also need $1,000 from each of them, for the signatures to be valid. We don’t expect that this will be a problem. We look forward to seeing you, the MACS staff.
P.S. Don’t forget to pay the $5,000 fee for receiving this letter.
Photo: “University Center at the University of Memphis” by Bubbahotepblues is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
