She has been hailed as whiny, bratty, fake and malevolent, but Suzy Lee Weiss is my hero.

On March 30, Suzy Lee, a senior at Taylor Alldendice High School in Pittsburgh, blatantly called out college admissions offices around the country for lying to students.

Her method of communication? A witty, satirical column in the Wall Street Journal, titled “To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me: If only I had a tiger mom or started a fake charity.” The funniest part is that she is right.

This year, the harsh truth is, you were lucky to get into one college. The highly competitive applicant class of 2013 truly came to bat. Unfortunately, most of us struck out. Me, I was lucky—other than Indiana University my sole acceptance came from Vanderbilt University.

Am I bitter? Truthfully, I was. But, as I reflected on the entire college search and application process I realized that there was no point in lamenting something I could not change. So I rolled up my sleeves and went to work with my options. Suzy Lee? Not so much.

Look at her. Unlucky? Yes. Bitter? Clearly. Yet she speaks the truth—this competitively subjective game that is college admission is both ridiculous and nonsensical. As Suzy said, the typical college spiel of “just be yourself” is only great advice if “yourself has nine extracurriculars, six leadership positions, three varsity sports, killer SAT scores and two moms.”

It should be noted that Weiss faced an inordinate amount of criticism for publishing her opinion. Many people found her to be insensitive to minorities and overly entitled. College admissions blogger Jon Boeckenstedt even posted a blog called “To All the Colleges Suzy Lee Weiss Rejected,” in which he says Weiss “would have been a shoe-in at almost all of the more than 4,000 colleges she chose not to apply to.”

Sure, Weiss’ comments came off as brash, but being someone who just went through the same process, I can both identify and relate to her satire. As she explained on the Today show on April 4, her piece is a satire; “(it) pokes fun at things that are politically correct. That’s what (she) was trying to do.”

Truthfully, the college admissions process has become such a crapshoot that there is no accurate way to get results. We have reached a point where standardized test scores are not an application booster; rather, they are now a criteria for college admission.

This year, for instance, more than 25 percent of Vanderbilt applicants had an 800 on SAT Math and an 800 on SAT Verbal. As these statistics show, the time when high test scores and a solid GPA got you into school is gone, simply because everyone has the scores and everyone has the grades.

Admission, now, is about separating yourself from that highly selective field—a task much easier said than done, just ask Suzy. She had the scores (2120 SAT) and she had the grades (4.5 GPA), yet her internship with the U.S. Senate was not enough to push her through the blockade.

Sure, it is a little bit too late to edit her resume to include “Wall Street Journal columnist” and “Today show contributor.” In fact, at the time these accolades may have made little difference in her ultimate admissions decisions. Yet you can bet that her admissions liaisons at these schools now took a second look at the day that they closed the door on Suzy Lee Weiss.

Ryan Zukerman is a managing editor for the HiLite. The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach him at [email protected].