Comments (0)Admission
May 22, 2009Karen Segall
Jean Hanff Korelitz
Grand Central Publishing 2009, 464 pages (hardcover), $24.99
Every spring outstanding teenagers across the country receive thick envelopes offering admission to the Ivy League college of their dreams. Or not. If you happen to be merely brilliant, completely likeable and committed to social justice but otherwise an “average” kid, you will have to impress a committee of admission officers who have seen and heard it all.
“Admission” is a thoroughly absorbing fictional look at the increasingly complicated world of Ivy League college admissions. At the same time, it’s the story of the increasingly complicated life of an Ivy League college admission officer and a past decision that has come back to haunt her in a big way.
Portia Nathan, 30-something, Jewish and Ivy-educated, is an admission officer for Princeton. She handles thousands of applications and spends countless hours reading their moving essays. Portia is compassionate, wise and professional, but her job requires rejection, sometimes of entitled teenagers from prestigious prep schools who feel acceptance is their birthright and their parents, who challenge her qualifications, forcing her to defend a system they assume is unfair if it excludes their offspring.
But Portia has a secret from her own college years and it’s about to make an unexpected, yet timely appearance. Readers, even those without Ivy League math skills, will quickly guess what’s going to show up in Portia’s pile of applications.
So as her personal life unravels and her current crop of Princeton applicants await their envelopes, Portia must finally face the consequences of a decision she made long ago and decide how to set things right, even if she must break the rules to do so.
“Admission” is a skillfully paced, gripping story about the cost of decisions we make, or that are made for us, while we are still young. If you’re the parent of a high school student with big Ivy League dreams, “Admission” might be a bit scary. For the rest, it’s a book well worth reading.