Tag Archives: American Dream

The American Dream Is Simply a Dream

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By Sosena T.

All that you have isn’t solely the product of your hard work. Instead, it’s the result of a combination of factors that have played a significant role in bringing you to where you are. Because of this, the idea of a society built entirely on merit can never truly exist.

But if no one’s success is entirely their own—then whose is it?

The accident of birth has contributed to the establishment of societal classes since the days of Ancient Greece. When we look at the “meritocracy” system in America, it’s clear that what Americans pride themselves on is not so different from that of Greece. It, too, is tainted by chance.

Two high school students in Princeton, NJ—Aryan Ahja and Hoin Lee—who are currently going through the grueling college application process, said that success today is closely related to “individual connections” and comes with “a certain degree of bias.”

Bias may help someone advance in life, but that’s not true meritocracy. A fair playing field would need to exist—but that can only happen in utopian societies. Not in America. Not in 2025.

According to Nicholas Fata, a graduate student at Princeton University, the poster boy of meritocracy—the American Dream—is actually exclusive. The world we live in has restricted the possibility of prosperity due to various barriers, from economic limitations to social inequalities. And while the American Dream may mean something different to everyone, the role of merit in achieving one’s goals is often far smaller than we like to believe.

So can a true meritocracy ever exist?

Maybe questions like these—mine and yours—can’t be answered with a single explanation that quenches all thirst for reason. But acknowledging the random advantages and inequalities of life can strengthen our understanding of today’s society.

Sometimes dreams are just dreams. But looking toward the future without limits in mind?


That’s better than any American Dream.

Trump: Serial Killer of the ‘American Dream’ 

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How Trump’s policies are destroying the American Dream of higher education

By Mai E.L

Americans love rags-to-riches stories. We root for underdog characters who climb the socioeconomic ladder and chase the American Dream in some of our most beloved books and movies. Now, that dream is being slashed by President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill in one fell swoop, as policies lower the lifetime cap for graduate student loans, making it much more difficult to earn an advanced degree. 

From 1995 to 2017, graduate school debt increased tenfold, climbing to $94,141 on average among federal borrowers, according to the Education Data Initiative. That number is much higher for PhDs and degrees from private universities. Under Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, the lifetime cap for non-professional graduate loans is $100,000. About one in five master’s students borrow above that proposed limit, according to Preston Cooper at the American Enterprise Institute.

Although the prerequisites to be eligible for graduate education have shifted, one requirement remains: money. The cost of education has inflated in recent years, but resources for low-income students have also increased. Graduate students can currently borrow up to the cost of their graduate program. By July 2026, that won’t be the case. President Trump’s recent legislative actions have compromised the accessibility of higher education for working-class learners, effectively keeping the poor poor.

The BBB was signed on the 249th birthday of the United States, a nation originally built on hard work and education. While the stated goal of this policy is to push colleges to match their tuition to the lowered loan cap, the true consequence will be that students who rely on loans to pay tuition will be left behind.

Trump, a man known for opening up his playground of politics to the rich, is now pursuing policies that will trap Americans in a generational cycle of poverty. Without intervention, we can rest assured that the American dream will soon be dead. 

DREAMers Band Together To Build Awareness, Find Allies

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United We Dream

By Yarlin Morales
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Everyone wants the American Dream, whether they want to admit it or not. “DREAMers,” undocu-mented Americans who came to the United States before turning 17 and have legal protections under  the Deferred Action for Child-hood Arrivals (DACA) program, have found ways to support each other to achieve their own version of the American Dream through non-for-profit organizations like America’s Voice, United We Dream and Define American.

America’s Voice is an organization whose mission is to put America’s eleven million undocumented immigrants on a full path to citizenship by changing the political climate. Zachary Mueller, a digital communications manager at America’s Voice, says that it aims “to be a front door to the immigrants rights movement for folks that may or may not have any personal connections to immigrants.” To do this, he says America’s Voice tries “to drown a lot of the policy stuff and a lot of the confusing language that  can tend to get into the weeds.” Their main goal is to help stop xenophobic language before it starts, making it easier for immi-grants to tell their stories. With over 800,000 members, United We Dream is the largest immigrant  youth-led network in the country, according to José Muñoz, the organization’s national communications manager. The organization aims to ensure that the voices of their members, who are directly impacted by immigration policy, are heard across the media by pitching stories to reporters, training members, and  tracking the news. 

Some DREAMers have created chapters of orga-nizations in universities to help students covered by DACA. Marco Gonza-lez Blancas and Salvador Chavero Arellano, both recent Duke University graduates, served on the board of their campus’s Define America chapter. They were freshmen when then-President Trump dismantled DACA on September 5, 2017—a date Arellano says he will never forget. “That was when a lot of us—you know, freshman, sophomore, junior, seniors—got together, and we said something needs to be done. We need to fight.”

Define American’s “mission is to change the narra-tive of immigration in the United States, both legal and undocumented,” says Gonzalez. Through informing the Duke student body, they were able to create better allies. The group created an Undocumented Awareness Week with edu-cational and social events. They asked students to give up their student ID, “which literally gives them access to every building on cam-pus and allows them to buy food and all those things, [so] they could kind of ex-perience what it meant to be undocumented,” Gonzalez.  DREAMers have gone above and beyond to build awareness and allies. In doing so, they hope to find a pathway to their own American Dream: the dream of citizenship.

Children at border should be given a chance

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By Diego Pineda
Raleigh, N.C.

Tens of thousands of children from Central America are currently in detention centers around the border area. After traveling thousands of miles — trekking on top of a train known as “La Bestia” (“The Beast”) and crossing the desert —  these innocent children were caught by the United States Border Patrol as they had one foot inside and the other foot outside of making their dreams come true.

Escaping violence, poverty, deficiency of resources and persecution, the children are only seeking a light to the end of their tunnel. This tunnel might be dark and lonely as they walk through a desert that undergoes extremes of hot and cold temperatures. As they make their way through the Central American borders and Mexico, they tend to lack food and shelter. Everywhere they go there are dangerous people who try to sexually abuse them or get them to join gangs. Continue reading →