Written By: Sean-Hector Toland Matos, Staff Writer

America has a lot of things going for it: our economy is recovering, the unemployment rate is down, and our culture is omnipresent. The best thing about our country though, is our system of higher education. I have never seen a more efficient, straightforward, and inexpensive way to apply for college anywhere else in the world.

The road to higher education all starts with college visits. Sometime during junior year, you realize that all of your friends are visiting countless universities in order to see if they “get a feel for it or not.” This concept, which is notably absent almost everywhere else, had my mother happily driving me six hours away in order to see what all of my potential options were!

After that first college visit, College Board begins taking over your life. Every night before I go to bed, I put on my jammies, tuck my feet under the sheets, and pray to the College Board. I praise this institution and am truly grateful that it has reduced the past seventeen years of my life into an SAT score. I also happily pay my $92 tithe every time I take an AP test and never secretly question where the money is going. After all, College Board is ‘nonprofit.’

Then, I get to write a college essay! This is the best part of the process! Every high school senior gets to write a 650 word or less essay, choosing from one of five prompts.. This sounded really hard at first, but then I looked at all of the examples and they made me feel so much better! All you have to do to get into college is build shelters for kids in Africa, climb the Himalayan mountains to visit Buddhist monks, build a website for St. Jude’s hospital, or cure cancer! Thankfully, I’ve done all four of these things so I’m a shoe in. If you haven’t, don’t be discouraged! Maybe you’ll invent a new mathematical equation that will change our world as we know it, or discover a long lost civilization in Peru. Better yet, do both! All the while, you’ll be receiving hundreds of pieces of mail a week from colleges you’ve never heard of. Make sure to apply to all of them! It’s only a hundred dollar application fee.

This leads me to my final point. With college costs rising through the roof, I was initially concerned about how I was going to pay for my university education. Thankfully with the help of my bank, the government, and other predatory charlatans, I can afford my $50,000 a year university with student loans. Free money! Whoo hoo! I sincerely can’t wait until I’m in my thirties so I can ecstatically attempt to pay off both my mortgage and my student loan debt. And if I should ever run into economic troubles, I won’t be able to default on these student loan obligations. It’s like a Christmas present you can’t return! (This is a good thing because it means the banks and colleges really care about me). So there you have it everyone. We really have it good. The only thing that could make it better, is if Donald Trump becomes president and builds a wall. Hopefully, the money comes from more budget cuts to the public school system.