College Admission Help

The secrets of College 'Admission'
By LAURIE MUCHNICK
Bloomberg News
Jean Hanff Korelitz is an Ivy League spy.
After reading high-schoolers' applications to Princeton University for two years, she has written "Admission," (Grand Central, 452 pages, $24.99), a novel that reveals the secrets of a place many prospects find more mysterious than the Pentagon.
Does the bright but unremarkable scion of an old Princeton family have a better chance of getting in than the quirkily brilliant son of supermarket workers? Making those judgments is Portia Nathan, a 38-year-old admissions officer. As the book begins, she's visiting high schools to meet with interested students.
We're treated to word-for-word transcriptions of two sessions, one at Deerfield Academy, a prestigious (real-life) boarding school, and one at a hippy-dippy (fictional) school called Quest.
"Look, there is no mystery about this," Portia says to the Deerfield kids. "We're looking for intellectual passion. ... We are looking for the student who is so jazzed about ... whatever ... that he or she can't wait to get to Princeton and find out everything there is to know about it."
I wouldn't have thought a speech about application essays could be interesting, but Korelitz makes it work. She doesn't have a definitive answer for why some get in and some don't, but it's fascinating to listen to her ruminate on the subject.
One of the hints Portia gives those Deerfield students is not to "mount a campaign": "There's very little we can learn from four of your teachers that we couldn't have learned from two."
Korelitz ignores her own advice, throwing too much stuff into the book, but in the end I'd have to mark her file "Admit."


The secrets of College 'Admission'