Admissions of all Kinds

Anyone who's ever shepherded a child through the college admission process or has survived it herself will appreciate Jean Hanff Korelitz's novel Admission. Princeton admissions officer Portia Nathan devotes herself fiercely to the young people represented by the thick piles of paper on her desk. "Not that she remembered them as individuals—no one could ever do that—but she couldn’t excise them, either. Instead, she sometimes felt as if she were throwing them behind her, into a great sack that grew heavier and heavier every year, and then she dragged them forward with her, all those lives." I was reminded of what was best about my career teaching English to high school seniors: the privilege of witnessing passionate young lives at the peak of their potential. Though we meet very few of them, the real life force of this story emanates from the hundreds of students whose admission files occupy Portia's desk, home, and soul.