In a March 28 email to the student body, university administration announced a dramatic change in Carnegie Mellon’s educational values. Instead of becoming a test-required school, like many schools seeing a decline in academic performance are doing, Carnegie Mellon is fully flipping their admission priorities. Starting with the class of 2029, the less literate a student is, the more desirable they are. This change is driven by a shift toward peak optimization. Influenced by tech entrepreneurs and the “manosphere,” the school has decided that for students to prioritize what truly matters (numbers and pictures on the computer), they must forget how to read. Specifics regarding testing of illiteracy and expected benchmarks will be released in the coming weeks.
This change comes after a groundbreaking study showing that students who spend time reading — whether for pleasure, navigation, or communication — have lower performances in STEM classes. As AI violates more copyright law and plagiarizes all written text on the internet, students no longer need to read or write. We expect all future writing to be done by AI, edited by AI, and read by AI. Humans no longer need to be involved in the equation. AI is just better at writing than we are.
“When you really start looking around, words are everywhere,” commented Skip Wurds, an admissions officer. “You look at menus, road signs, building names; you just can’t get away from letters.” This realization reflects a bigger theme: our dependance on the written word.
“It feels like we have technologically evolved past the need for words. We should be relying on emojis more,” a student (who requested to remain anonymous) told their advisor after failing 76‐107: Writing About Data because they submitted an essay analyzing global child mortality rates written only in emojis, titled “👶📉🌍💯👍”.
Professors in Dietrich College have responded with an open letter to the administration, who replied with a brief email “TL;DR.” When asked about this, Skip Wordz told us the admissions officers weren’t expecting, or willing to consider, a response that exceeded 2 emojis. Bravely, the Natrat team skimmed the letter. The professors emphasized their worries about the repercussions of this decision: “Aren’t there letters in math, too?” They also said something about the future of all English, history, and humanities classes, but, as the admissions officers pointed out earlier, the letter was “too long.”
The Natrat reached out to Scott Fahlman, the inventor of the smiley face, who shared his excitement about the decision. Fahlman said he was “glad the world finally understands the power of the emoji” and realizes “words just have too many letters.”
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