u/Ashamed-Okra-4549

from what I remember of the plot, the main character was a boy named artie or something similar whose dad loses his job at the planetarium and so his family has to move. another important part of the plot was the boy's new neighbor who he assumed was a creepy murderer but who just has a passion for the stars.

his best friend is a girl named Priya.

the book had Mars on the cover, included weird descriptions like calling the friend's mom a "rainbow," and complained about raisins in cookies like most middle grade books

any ideas?

ts gotta be the most fried college sub on reddit. it's just a microcosm of everything that's wrong with modern day college admissions and the discourse surrounding it. the constant chanceme posts and the "what should I do to get into MIT" posts from international students with 1300s just shows that the obsession with "top" universities is feeding into serious delusion. "prestigious" colleges like MIT collect thousands of dollars in application fees from kids who realistically stand no shot at gaining admission, all the while keeping decisions opaque and reliant on "institutional priorities." that state of affairs is so plain and sad to see on that sub.

and while I get the frustration with the constant low-quality posts, the "moderators" lowk make everything worse. perfect examples of individuals who make their graduation from a prestigious university years ago their entire personality and relentlessly snark on prospective students with sometimes very valid questions for trivial reasons. just like the college admissions "consultants" whose only qualification is graduating from an ivy and who flood social media with videos criticizing freshmen for not "locking in" just to promote their exorbitant services.

what makes it worse is that it genuinely could be a helpful and productive space if students approached their questions from an informed, realistic perspective and the moderators took a student-centered approach instead whatever weird superiority thing they have going on right now. with the toxicity of the admissions landscape, however, it doesn't surprise me (but it does disappoint me) that r/MITAdmissions is the exact opposite of that.

thoughts?

EDIT: some people pointed out that I should make the distinction between moderators and the most frequent commentators, which is 100 percent true. I conflated the two, sorry about the confusion.