Okay, I was trying to stay sympathetic to this article as I read it, but it bears almost no resemblance to reality as I've known it (not a stranger to these institutions).
This is less an indictment of "the system" than further evidence that systems can be gamed. Is this a shock to anyone?
Our narrator seems to have coasted through a variety of moderately prestigious (an adjective meaning that other people think whatever it is must be very discerning) opportunities. He chose to squander them out of a seemingly nihilistic/angsty/meta-hipstery and extremely adolescent rage against the machine.
His "evidence" is anecdotal. Your evidence is "anecdotal." So too will be my evidence. But the cynicism he describes mirrors a lot of what I observed and continue to observe in the majority (but not the vast majority) of students at top universities. The nihilistic focus on grades/GPA/taking easy classes. The great lack of focus on actually learning anything or absorbing different perspectives. The focus on social proof and prestige. etc. etc.
No, I don't think so. Or if so, it was ancillary. He wasn't saying "I should have done things differently" -- instead he was trying to show how depraved, spoiled, and inadequate people are inside the ivory tower. Much as in "Less Than Zero" by Bret Easton Ellis, we are supposed to be shocked at how the privileged elite are venal, cruel, phony, unworthy, and get away with it too.
You may or may not find that persuasive. But just as with "Less Than Zero" (a terrible, terrible book) and much of the similarly themed failure memoir genre, you get the sense that it is wildly exaggerated fabulism with a hysterical moral tone that is supposed to ensnare the reader in outrage.
This is less an indictment of "the system" than further evidence that systems can be gamed. Is this a shock to anyone?
Our narrator seems to have coasted through a variety of moderately prestigious (an adjective meaning that other people think whatever it is must be very discerning) opportunities. He chose to squander them out of a seemingly nihilistic/angsty/meta-hipstery and extremely adolescent rage against the machine.
What a pity. For him.