Stuck on the Ivy League Waitlist? Time for a YouTube Plea

Spring blooms across this fine country with all sorts of bright perennials, including the much scorned college admission rejections letters. A slight variant, the garden weed of your bouquet of paper, is the tenebrous Waitlist letter leaving over-achieving high school seniors in a maniacal state of self-cogitation.

This, combined with an abundance of free time on YouTube, can be a dangerous, if not amusing, cocktail for self-expression. It started with “Dear Harvard,” an original piano ballad from Grace Oberhofer , a YouTuber from Washington who posted the video after she received one of those ill fated letters from none other than Harvard.

Then came “A Heartfelt Plea for MIT,” a derivative on the concept—posted as a video response to “Dear Harvard”—from Sarabjot Anand. At least we think it’s him, since we don’t actually see Anand singing in the video montage of his extracurriculars and newspaper clippings. But judging by the off-key reaching for some of the higher notes, we have to assume he’s the real deal here, and makes no allusions to his singing ability.

Whoa there MIT you put me on the waiting list, what’s the deal yo?
I love you and Tim does too, we’ll live in Cambridge see the view, what’s the hold up for?
You said wait till March 14th.
I said all right we shall see.
Waited so long just to see.
You have been waitlisted!

Both videos are ample, though there has to be better talent out there given the quality of musicians on YouTube these days. So far no “Dear Princeton” or “Dear Yale” editions have popped up, so if you find yourself on such a list, it wouldn’t hurt to whip up your best. But if singing your heart out and facing the shame of YouTube commenters doesn’t work, it doesn’t hurt to know the dirty secrets of college waitlists.