How to get into the Ivy League
Have you ever wondered what you have to do to get into those
American Ivy League colleges? This is fiction but Jean Hanff Korelitz who is married to the poet Paul Muldoon, a Princeton professor, worked
for a while for the Princeton
Office of Admission as an outside reader so she has the inside scoop.
They aren't just looking for the students with the
highest marks, they are looking to create a diverse and well rounded
student body (of incredibly smart people!). It helps to have won an
olympic medal or to have published a book while still in high school.
It doesn't help to send cookies with your application.
The
heroine of Admission is Portia Nathan an admission officer at
Princeton. As part of her job she travels to high schools to encourage
students to apply to Princeton and she also reads all the applications
for her area of the country. She cares very deeply about her job and
knows she has, in some ways, the power to change lives. She is 38
years old and seems comfortably settled living with her professor
boyfriend. As she works her way through this year's applications,
however, her life starts to slowly come apart. The professor leaves
her for a colleague who is pregnant with his child and Portia comes
across one application that brings back a long hidden secret.
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