The college application process is hard, and no one knows that better than high school seniors. But when Clark Whitby, of Henry David Thoreau High School’s Class of 2018, tried to find a little online help to clear up his options, a foolish mix-up led him to mistake the Stanford Review for an actual review of Stanford.
He was immediately radicalized.
“I read all the threads on College Confidential first, but it was just a bunch of obnoxious over-achievers,” Whitby said. “So when I went to look for other sources, the Stanford Review popped up. I didn’t think much of it at first, but then I realized they were really making some good points. I mean, wow — taxes are theft when you really think about it!”
It took an estimated 45 seconds on the Review’s homepage before Whitby — formerly a self-described “moderate centrist” — was fully on board with every stance the Review had ever taken. After only reading a few headlines, Whitby decided that David Starr Jordan was the original “Yas Kween,” having a tree as a school mascot is eco-fascist propaganda, and Thinking Matters is a “liberal globalist ploy.”
Luckily, the Stanford Review also met Whitby’s original need for a Stanford review.
“It gave me a much more accurate picture of the University and the student body than I got anywhere else,” the prospective applicant said. “For instance, all of Stanford’s brochures and pamphlets make it look like Stanford has a very diverse student body, but the Review promised they had a ‘big scheme’ in place to change that.”
The Stanford Review, in usual contrarian fashion, responded by publishing an op-ed saying Whitby was a “deep state pawn of the coastal academic literati” for having read something.
