College Spirit Wear Day is a dress-up day intended to celebrate submission of UC and Cal State college applications. Every year, seniors stress over their apps, notably their essays, but for the first time, an event was created in hopes of rewarding their hard work. This dress-up day asks students to wear their favorite college apparel to school.
Not surprisingly, the event and its intended purpose are barely related. Slaving for days over essays after filling out loads of personal information and often feigning sleep, most students want to just leave their struggles behind and not worry about college until mid-March, when they receive their UC and CSU decisions. Indeed there are those who want to support or represent a school, but their motives have little to do with finishing applications.
Prior to decisions dates, having your dream school written across your chest only leads to more nerves and stress. The superstitious ones have always avoided this practice, and with good reason. Wearing a school’s merchandise before being accepted expresses an overconfident, self-entitled image. Wearing merchandise before being rejected only results in raising false hopes. (There have been a few instances in the past where applicants burn clothing after receiving their letters.) Sure, everyone has dream schools, but some people dream too high.
On a more skeptical note, placing this dress-up day after the November deadline includes mainly UC and CSU applicants. In unnoticeable ways, the event promotes a narrowed view for schools to apply to. Recognizing thirty-three (ten UC plus twenty-three CSU campuses) out of a few thousand schools in America does not acknowledge other applications, many of which are due at the end of December. More and more students are applying to only these public state schools, contributing to the monopoly, and ignoring other options open to them.
The issues that arise from college sweatshirt day make it a subconsciously cruel way to celebrate the completion of applications. Either way, those that do choose to participate in the dress-up day can still show their interest for a certain school. Though, it is difficult to represent a school without attending, let alone having yet to be accepted to, it. The blame is not on any one person, but on the collective student mentality and the unpredictable nature of college admissions.
