Pay to Win to Grow Stronger (Please Vote!)

Chapter 36: Pay to Win to Grow Stronger (Please Vote!)

Early autumn.

The final year of high school had begun.

There was a reason Sheldon would later sneer at Penny for spending four years in high school. After all that dragging her feet, she had only spent three years there before heading off to the University of Texas at Austin as a full-time college student.

Emmett walked across campus in a gloomy mood.

With Little Sheldon gone, Fruit Hard Candy Band had practically fallen apart. Other than him, no one seemed to care anymore.

Adam was hopelessly addicted to Transformers.

Juno came and went like a ghost. Whenever he occasionally ran into her, she was always inseparable from that girl named Karen Smith, making him deeply suspicious. He wanted to complain, "Enough already. Not only are you wasting resources yourself, you're competing with us for resources too."

Senior year, twelfth grade, had reached a dividing line.

Students with good grades had begun striving for college, either taking college prep courses or registering for the SAT.

The last time Emmett went looking for Adam, he discovered that aside from curling up with Jennifer to study Transformers, Adam was also preparing for the SAT.

That made Emmett both jealous and deeply impressed by Adam.

If it were him, how could he possibly focus on studying while being with a girl like Jennifer?

"What a waste."

Emmett let out a deep sigh.

It was for the growing distance between him and his friends, and for his own uncertain future.

With his grades, elite schools were out of the question. Combined with his family's circumstances, he could not afford even an ordinary college—well, more accurately, he could not afford to fool around at one.

Colleges and students were becoming more and more like merchants and consumers. After spending that much money, "fooling around" was only fitting.

Unlike East Country, universities in the United States had been created for the upper classes from the very beginning, so their admissions process naturally carried the air of high society and aristocracy.

East Country's score-only system, with countless students fighting to cross a single-log bridge, was looked down on by some people. Whenever they made their arguments, they brought up the quality-only admissions of American universities.

What was quality-only admissions?

It meant that grades were not the sole measure of merit.

Then who counted as worthy?

Either you had money or power. And in the United States, power and money were interchangeable, so it all boiled down to one sentence.

Pay to win to grow stronger!

The top-tier pay-to-win players were the children or descendants of the rich. Their parents had already accumulated wealth and, before they were even born, had established foundations, built buildings for top universities, donated money, hired renowned teachers, and brought in expensive teaching equipment.

Thus, no matter how wildly those rich children messed around in high school or how terrible their grades were, they could stroll into world-class universities that countless people could never enter no matter how hard they worked.

The true winners in life!

The funniest example was when Leonard's physics department held a dinner. The dean wanted Sheldon, Leonard, and the others to go flatter those big donors and pull in funding for the physics department.

Sheldon had refused at first. He relied entirely on talent and good looks, so why would he need to flatter anyone? But after Amy reminded him, he became afraid that those wealthy donors would give all their money to geology, which was not science at all in his eyes, or even to the humanities.

So he went into action. But afterward, the dean never asked Sheldon to seek donations again. He even ordered him not to appear at similar events, because Sheldon's flattery was painfully blunt. He would not even shake hands with people, and would straightforwardly say, "Hurry up and give us the money."

Fortunately, they had Leonard, a natural fundraiser. An elderly female professor took a liking to him because he resembled her college boyfriend. Back then, she had chosen money. Now that her husband was dead and she held a huge fortune, she planned to fulfill her old dream through Leonard.

Leonard had refused at first, but when the elderly professor asked him, "What do you think I married a billionaire for back then?" Leonard was left completely dumbfounded—and then tempted.

In the end, with all of Sheldon's encouragement, including but not limited to getting blue pills and protection for Leonard from the neighboring medical department, spineless Leonard successfully raised enough money for the physics department to buy an ultra-luxurious centrifuge.

Sheldon's evaluation of Leonard was: this was your greatest contribution to the scientific community.

Sheldon's evaluation of the elderly professor was: she was an old widow trying to improve her social status through donations.

If that old widow had a child who wanted to attend college, then Caltech would open its arms to him, because that child had quality.

Maybe he had done nothing and was incapable of everything, but could the family fortune and social standing his family had accumulated over several generations really be worth less than your decade-plus of hard work?

A lifetime of struggle could not compare to being born into the right family. It was that cruel!

Second-tier pay-to-win players had slightly less wealth and status. They could not truly grow stronger simply by spending money—that was, they could not directly smash open the doors of elite universities with cash.

They would donate a "small sum" of several hundred thousand dollars to a prestigious school, become members of its donation committee, and when their children applied to that university, the admissions office would give them priority.

Third-tier pay-to-win players had even less wealth and social status, so they were reluctant to spend even several hundred thousand.

They would spend less money to send their children to college prep programs and honors courses, and have them participate in various niche sports that represented quality, such as horseback riding and golf.

Those niche sports universally recognized as symbols of quality were simply impossible for public high schools to offer. Even if they did offer them, most students could not afford the equipment.

After this triple-layered quality filter, more than half the applicants to elite schools were already gone. Add geniuses like Sheldon and Paige, who needed exceptional admission, and there were barely any spots left for ordinary students.

There were too many monks and too little porridge. With so many ordinary students, how were they supposed to decide whom to admit?

Thus came the SAT, the English abbreviation for Scholastic Aptitude Test—the American college entrance exam.

After going in circles, quality-only admissions returned to score-only admissions. But by then, it was no longer like East Country's nationwide college entrance exam, where countless students fought to cross a single-log bridge. Instead, a huge crowd of "high-quality" students flew directly across with their "high-quality" parents, smiling as they watched countless ordinary students fight to cross a steel cable.

No standard was the greatest standard of all!

County High School.

Under the fire-spitting gazes of countless Lemon Spirits, Adam and Jennifer walked into campus laughing and chatting. They ran into Juno and Karen head-on. Adam found it slightly strange, but still greeted them with a smile. "Hi, Juno. Karen."

Jennifer's smile froze when she saw Karen standing beside Juno like some kind of follower.

WTF?!

Wasn't Karen supposed to be her best friend?

Although Jennifer had poured all her time and energy into studying Transformers and mechanical aesthetics with Adam lately, leaving her no time for Karen, that was no reason for Karen to act like this.

And what the hell was Karen wearing?

Just like that bitch Juno, she was wearing a red hoodie.

Were they matching best-friend outfits?

A pair of Little Red Riding Hoods?

P.S. If you're interested, you can join the reader group: 992138848. The characters are composites of multiple film roles played by the same actors.

Juno: Juno + Fruit Hard Candy

Paige: Little Sheldon + Gifted + The Bad Seed

Karen: Mean Girls + Jennifer's Body + Little Red Riding Hood

Jennifer: Jennifer's Body + Transformers