About

I Got Into College the Old Fashioned Way is a snowclone that grew popular on Twitter in the wake of the 2019 College Admissions Bribery Scandal where it was revealed that very wealthy families had illegally paid a man to bribe admissions administrators and SAT proctors to help their children get into prestigious schools. As a joke, people began writing "I Got Into College the Old Fashioned Way: X," with X representing a different, but legal method to get into college without hard work.

Origin

The trend started on March 12th, 2019, when Twitter user @migold^[1] joked he was able to get into college thanks to white privilege, gaining over 230 retweets and 1,600 likes (shown below).

Spread

The format grew more popular after Ben Dreyfuss, son of actor Richard Dreyfuss, tweeted, "I got into college the old fashioned way: by letting my father’s celebrity speak for itself," gaining over 3,600 retweets and 53,000 likes (shown below, left). This led to the format spreading on Twitter, with some responses sincere responses and others jokes. Twitter user @SJSchauer tweeted "Lori Loughlin paid 500K for her daughter to get into USC and that's fucked up. I got into college the old fashioned way AKA sucking the deans dick and blackmailing him and his family," gaining over 1,600 retweets and 22,000 likes (shown below, right).

Other popular examples using the format included a tweet by screenwriter Randi Singer, gaining over 180 retweets and 3,300 likes (shown below, left) and a tweet by user @alyssalimp, gaining over 170 retweets and 1,700 likes (shown below, right). The jokes were covered by Mashable.^[2]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References