by Mary Pagones
Pride, Prejudice,
and
Personal Statements
Mary Pagones
“Not a Lady”
@2018 Mary Pagones
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
ISBN: 9781720001898
Also by Mary Pagones
The Fortune’s Fool Series
The Horse Is Never Wrong (Prequel)
Fortune’s Fool (#1)
Quick Bright Things Come to Confusion (#2)
Stars Hide Your Fires (#3)
Crawling Between Heaven and Earth (#4)
Give and Hazard All (#5)
Dear Reader
Jane Austen did not attach her name to her novels in print, but merely noted that they were by “A Lady.” Mary Pagones is no lady. She has worked for a private college admissions consultant for the past eighteen years, assisting students with their personal statements. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is unintentional. It should not be regarded as a guide to getting into college, no more than Pride and Prejudice should be regarded as a manual for choosing a life partner.
For all of my English teachers.
Even the ones who gave me Cs.
Part I: Prejudice
“To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ancles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to shew an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum.”
—Caroline Bingley, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 8
By tea-time, however, the dose had been enough, and Mr. Bennet was glad to take his guest into the drawing-room again, and when tea was over, glad to invite him to read aloud to the ladies. Mr. Collins readily assented, and a book was produced; but on beholding it (for every thing announced it to be from a circulating library), he started back, and begging pardon, protested that he never read novels.
—Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 14
Chapter 1
It Is A Truth Universally…Oh, Never Mind…
IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED THAT A SUCCESSFUL COLLEGE APPLICANT WILL:
Have excellent grades
Take challenging classes
Pursue unique extracurricular activities
Have stratospheric standardized test scores
Cultivate singular talents
Have an upstanding character and passion to learn
So says the poster on the wall of my private college counselor’s office.
The phrase “universal truths” irks me. It’s an obvious reference to the famous quote from the first line of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The first line of the book is supposed to be ironic. Ironic because the rich, single man doesn’t necessarily want to marry. It’s the women around him who do. There’s nothing ironic about needing good grades, high test scores, and some special talent to get into college.
I say, “I like the Pride and Prejudice reference on the poster,” to Ms. Desborough, anyway. But I don’t like it. I’m communicating the fact that I’ve read the book. I’m testing her.
“Pride and Prejudice?” she asks. She looks confused.
“Your poster. Universal truths? The book’s famous first line?”
“You know, I’ve never read Pride and Prejudice,” she says, as if the thought just occurred to her. “Or seen the film. Isn’t that terrible? I’ve had that poster as long as I’ve been doing this, almost twenty-five years. I never knew.” She doesn’t sound as though she thinks it’s terrible, more like she’s proud. “I wish I had the time to read novels. It is a novel, isn’t it?”
“Possibly the greatest novel ever written,” I say, coldly.
Ms. Desborough isn’t my high-school-assigned guidance counselor. Her self-bestowed title is Private College Admissions Consultant. She tells students how to get into colleges—elite colleges—for a living. What to write for their college personal statements. What activities to do, what classes to take to seem impressive. She’s supposed to have some special secrets only money can buy.
The guidance department at my public high school is widely regarded as useless. My school counselor, Ms. Sargent, barely remembers who I am. Ms. Sargent simply recommends whatever colleges send over promotional materials to the guidance office on any particular day.
My father wants me to get into a college or university with the sort of name that silences a room, the sort of name that makes people say, “Your daughter must be smart.” Then offer her a job with a fortune of a salary immediately afterward.
Plus, I need some kind of scholarship. I can’t afford to graduate from college with too much debt. Until this year, I only read about Regency cads getting into debt at the gambling table in romance books. Now potential debt is something very real. I’m not at risk of getting into debt for pleasure, but rather for an education. I know that my father regards making the wrong college choice is as imprudent as gambling away an inheritance at whist. Not that I’ve ever played whist, only read about it.
Because Dad’s so worried about my future, he dug deep into our collective family pockets to hire this private college counselor. Lots of kids have hired admissions consultants already, some for all the years they’ve been in high school.
I’m a senior at a New Jersey suburban public high school. It has an excellent academic reputation; it’s considered one of the best public high schools in the state. As a rule, area families don’t bother to send their kids to expensive preparatory schools. A handful of Rosewood South students always get into Ivy League schools, year after year. The parking lot’s stuffed with Beamers and Audis. Kids wear clothes emblazoned with an alphabet soup of well-known designers. The district is large enough for a few mere mortals like me and my friends to attend to give greater diversity to the socioeconomic scenery.
I’m not so sure this private consultant is the best way to secure me an advantage in the college admissions game, based on her reaction to her own poster. Things aren’t looking promising.
“Liss loves Jane Austen,” says my father, proudly.
My father has a PhD in English literature. Right now, we only have an hour together because soon he’ll have to jump in his car, drive to the next county, and teach a class. He teaches at the state university—Rutgers University— along with several other community colleges as an adjunct professor. He likes to joke that the real meaning of adjunct professor is “academic indentured servitude.” Adjunct means that he has no office, no tenure, and he’s paid per course. He doesn’t write books or articles or do any of the things he dreamed of doing when he was a graduate student at the University of Delaware. He doesn’t give lectures about irony in Jane Austen. He teaches classes with names like Speech and Communication and Introduction to Basic Composition. The kids still call him “professor,” though—when they show up. I guess that’s some consolation? He’s told me some interesting stories about his students over the years.
You know how people make fun of teachers for having the summer off? Forget about it. My dad is always teaching. Summers, nights, pretty much the only good thing about his job is that he was around a lot when I was growing up. I remember sitting in on his night classes when I was very young and there was no babysitter to be found. In the corner, I’d quietly read the types of books he wishes were on his syllabi, like Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights.
The greatest reward of my father’s profession is the f
act that I grew up talking about books at the dinner table. Good books. Great books. I was never told that a book was too difficult for someone my age to read, or prohibited from reading at the dinner table or under my blankets late at night. While we’ve had to scrimp and save as a family, my father has never refused to buy me a book. There’s always been money for books. For education. Until now.
Ms. Desborough has my transcript in front of her. “Elisa?”
“Everyone calls me Liss.” Please remember my name, that’s why we’re here, to have a guidance counselor who can remember my name.
“Math appears to be an issue. Your verbal SAT score is 200 points higher than your math SAT score. That’s very unusual. Even some of my strongest students in verbally oriented subjects receive superior standardized test grades in math.”
I clear my throat. “I’m not a big fan of standardized tests in general.” The SAT (or its kissing cousin the ACT) is a standardized test high school students take as part of the college application process.
“No one is a fan of standardized tests. But that should be irrelevant as to whether a student excels at taking them or not,” says Ms. Desborough.
Actually, in my experience, students who have done well on such tests are fans, or are at least adept at turning the conversation in the right direction so they can casually mention they’ve racked up scores in the high 700s on each section of the SATs, out of a possible 800. Or a 34 or 35 total on the ACT, out of a possible 36. They know that if you say the right numbers, like saying, “a single man of large fortune, four or five thousand a year” in a Jane Austen novel, listeners’ pupils will dilate in awe and envy.
“More and more schools are allowing students to avoid sending in standardized test scores. We could focus on score-optional schools. Yet Rutgers is not score optional. You said you wanted to apply to the state university,” she points out. She says “Rutgers” and “state university” like they are dirty words. Like a student going to a state school is a failure, even though my father teaches Rutgers classes as part of his nomadic academic life.
“I am applying to Rutgers because I think I could get some kind of a scholarship.” I’m not crazy about the idea of Rutgers. Rutgers has warehouse-sized classes. It’s a commuter school. The kids who don’t commute often join fraternities and sororities. There are some brilliant kids—and adults, for sure—who go there just because it’s cheap. But Rutgers is not the college experience I want. On the other hand, I am realistic. I know I need to get into a school that won’t cripple me financially for all eternity. I don’t want to become one of those twentysomethings who can’t buy a house, get married, or pretty much do anything but work because of a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt.
Ms. Desborough adds, “Even some score-optional schools want to see the SATs or ACTs if you’re looking for money from them. Retaking the SATs is a necessity.”
“We are absolutely looking for scholarships,” says my father. I feel terrible that my father feels terrible that he can’t say go wherever you want, Liss. I look over at him. He’s already dressed to teach, in a baggy polo shirt made of some shiny material, a pair of khakis, and loafers. He’s cleaning his glasses because this whole situation is making him nervous. He’s sunburnt from mowing our lawn between intervals of teaching and grading papers.
Even the lenses of his glasses are thick and cheap, a marker of the fact that although my dad is rich in knowledge about literary symbolism and the importance of the Oxford comma, we’re poor in just about every other kind of way (including health and vision insurance), compared with the other families who have sat in these very same chairs. “I always hoped for more, for both of my girls,” he says. “More than just a degree from a state university. Elisa and Olivia are so bright, although they each have their own special strengths. I’d like them to find careers they love. And to get personal attention in the classroom.”
“Liss does have straight As in English,” says Ms. Desborough, grudgingly.
“Liss always has a book in her hand, and not just for school,” offers my father.
“Do you want to major in English?”
That’s a complicated question.
“I don’t recommend it,” cuts in my father, softly but firmly. “Honey, I hate to tell you ‘no,’ but we have to be practical. You can always read the books you love on your own. You’ve probably read everything that they’d require you to read for an English major, anyway, right? You’re already an accomplished writer.”
“I want to major in English,” I explain. “But it’s being discouraged.”
“I was thinking a business major,” says my father. “Something practical. Or economics.”
“Always nice to get a job after we graduate, isn’t it?” Ms. Desborough asks. I notice she uses the royal “we,” as if all three of us will be accepting the diploma together. I assume she doesn’t want “us” to get a degree from Rutgers, that’s for sure.
“I’m still paying off my student loans,” says my father. “I don’t want Liss to make the same mistakes, to have to work so hard in life.” He looks at his watch again. Almost time for him to teach a subject that doesn’t interest him to students that don’t want to learn. “What if Liss got into Princeton with a scholarship?”
“Dad, I’m not getting into Princeton University. But maybe…Pennington College?” I’m dropping the hint. I can barely bring myself to speak the word. I’m blushing, like I’m mentioning a crush. In a way, that’s what Pennington College is. It’s a New Jersey liberal arts school that has one of the best nineteenth-century literature departments in the country. I’ve already checked out the website and they have the same image of Elizabeth Bennet as I do on one of my editions of Pride and Prejudice at home. I’m not saying that’s the only reason why I want to go there, but shouldn’t such taste and discernment be honored with an application?
“Don’t reject a business or economic major without learning more about it, promise me that, Liss,” says my father. He looks so tragic right now. “Growing up means making hard choices,” he says softly. “Doing things you don’t like to do.”
“I don’t see how it’s grown up to do something for a living you’re inadequate at,” I say. “It’s not like I’m vengefully reading English literature to remain poor.”
“We’re not poor, Liss. Maybe you’ve never tried in STEM subjects,” he says. Science, technology, engineering, math. I’m so tired of hearing about STEM.
“I know we’re not poor,” I say. I know that I have a roof over my head and food in the refrigerator. I’m not ungrateful. I’m just a heat-seeking missile for subjects which have zero chance of a financial reward. British literature, dance, film, theater…my father blames himself for my heat-seeking capabilities.
I swing my legs. I’m short and my legs never touch the ground in chairs. My butt hurts, sitting on Ms. Desborough’s hard seat. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be abrupt, but my father has to teach in an hour and I have my dance class.”
I’ve been dancing since I was a child—ballet, jazz, and modern. My mother died before I could even remember her properly. I have a feeling that my father enrolled me in ballet because he felt it was something little girls should do. He thought I had the right body type for it. I’m small, that’s for sure. I’ve been the kid at the front of every single school photo ever since I can remember. But I also have a long torso and short legs. And while according to the standards of the non-dance world, I’m slight, by dance standards, any excess flesh is as damning as the stigma of illegitimacy during the Regency.
In fact, one of the things I love about period dramas set in the nineteenth century is that the women look, well, a bit like me. Like I could actually reasonably be beautiful, by nineteenth-century standards, with the help of an Empire waistline, corset, maid, and curling-papers. I’m never going to look like a hardcore ballet bunhead.
Dance isn’t like writing. It doesn’t come naturally to me. Unlike geometry or chemistry, I enjoy working at it
. What I like most about dance is that it’s living literature; it’s like moving around in the stories of one of the books I like so much. But with ballet, no matter what, the movements never look quite right, not embodied by my less-than-skeletal frame.
Still, dance explains a great deal about my character. The time-consuming nature of dance is the reason I haven’t been involved in many extracurriculars at my school. Why I’ve never had a boyfriend. My dance school is all girls, so there’s no Mr. Darcy in sight.
I’m wearing a dance wrap around my shoulders this afternoon. It’s black, not pink. It’s designed to carefully conceal my favorite tight, black leotard with the inappropriately plunging neckline. Another example of how my body is all wrong: a top that would be acceptable on one of the waiflike, die-hard bunheads makes me look like I’m deliberately putting myself out there. I have a tattoo of a raven on my left breast, which is all I asked for my sixteenth birthday. It’s very obvious if I’m wearing just the right shirt. My father said I should take out my nose stud for this meeting, but I refused.
I am looking forward to dance class today. It’s the only time when my busy brain is quiet. When I’m dancing, I can’t focus on anything else. Still, at my studio, I’ve never quite fit in. I’m the girl with the black dyed hair, black nail polish, and too-dark shade of red lipstick. I’m told I look like a dancer by non-dancers, mainly because I don’t slouch, I guess. But by the standards of my studio, I’m an oddity.
“Is ballet your main out-of-school activity? Do you have…talent?” asks Ms. Desborough.
“Middling. It’s a hobby. An accomplishment.” I love that term from period novels. I guess that’s what extracurriculars are for students today. Accomplishments.