Entertainment, Books - Air Force Times

‘Admission’ unseals hushed secrets behind ivied walls

At the end of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s wise and engaging novel about a college admissions officer, the main character is advised by a friend, “You could always write a book. Doesn’t everyone who leaves Ivy League admissions write a ‘how to get into college’ book?”

Portia Nathan laughs and says, “I guess. But does the world really need another one?”

It doesn’t, but students (Ivy League or otherwise), their parents, teachers and counselors, among others, can profitably read “Admission.” The title, which has a double meaning, is purposely singular, not plural, as in Princeton’s Office of Admission.

At heart it’s a love story — love lost, lost again, then found. But it’s best at describing the shifting and subjective job of deciding who gets into a college like Princeton, where the vast majority of kids, all who’ve been told they are so great, will be rejected. (Princeton recently reported accepting 9.8 percent of applicants for the class of 2013.)

Again and again, Portia checks off the box on applicants’ folders, “Only if room,” a euphemism for no, “as there was never room.” She wishes she could “reach through the folder to the kid beyond, and say, ‘Anyone would be ecstatic to have their child turn out as great as you. ... Please, go and do all the things you intend to do.’ ”

At 38, Portia is haunted by something she did as a student at Dartmouth, only hinted at until the end. Her secret propels the plot, but makes her a hard character to warm up to at first.

Korelitz, who has been a part-time reader in Princeton’s admission office, weaves in larger questions about privilege, entitlement and diversity and the problems of having 25 percent of all college applications going to 1 percent of the schools.

The plot turns on small-world kinds of coincidence that would defy any real-world odds. But that’s true of the odds of getting admitted to place like Princeton.