DEDICATION
For Simon and Nathaniel: May your decisions be your own.
EPIGRAPH
“Empower” is a verb I dislike, easy currency of those who tyrannize us with their piety. But I felt inclined to use it now.
TIM PARKS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
WHILE IT IS true that this book is based on the stories of some of the more than one hundred college-bound students who suffered my time, counsel, and Track Changes, no real person is depicted in these pages. Furthermore, though the universities named are real, admissions-office shenanigans are widespread, and therefore no school is more culpable than any other, and I have not pointed fingers here. Where a university is named in a certain act, it can only be assured that the university in question did nothing of the sort.
CONTENTS
Dedication
Epigraph
Author’s Note
August
September
October
November
December
January
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
AUGUST
“SHALL I TELL you the people who referred me?” the mother was saying, speaking quickly, wishing to show her hand but clearly trying to sound not pretentious or, worse, deluded about her own importance. “Janet Bergstrom and Caren Ahn and Sonya . . . but that’s just the year ahead of Sadie, I don’t know why I didn’t call you earlier, we were traveling and the kids have the summer off and, you know, we try to preserve some sense of summers, of childhood, you know how that is?” Here she sighed, but fear sounded a high note in her throat. “But now it’s back to school and I was talking with Janet and they’re getting ready to take Jake off to Yale and they’re just so grateful to you and I realized, it’s Sadie’s year, now, so how can we get started? I mean, are you available? Are you free?”
Anne felt a familiar twist in her belly. She already had her students for the year, here in Chicago, and one girl commuting from Minnesota, as well as the set of kids she’d know only by their e-mailed essay drafts and teeth-pulling phone conversations, not to mention the classroom full of immigrants’ children she volunteered with on the weekends. But Anne loved to feel in demand—who didn’t?—and she imagined that behind this woman’s trembling voice was a frightened, harried teenager whose life she might actually improve. Anne needed to hear more. Why did this woman think her daughter needed help getting into college? What were they expecting for her?
“I realize we’re very late,” the mother added, the quiver in her voice nearly vibrating the phone in Anne’s palm. “We’re willing to account for that however we need to, you know, with extra hours or what have you.”
Most wealthy parents resorted, at some point or another, to cash. Tutors, counselors, crash courses, Anne. You couldn’t begrudge them this. Newspapers were flogging the story of plummeting admissions rates, and it was true: the darling gates were narrower than ever before. Where was Harvard’s regular admit rate now . . . 9 percent? Eight? Meanwhile the kids, these broken-backed children, carted around their parents’ ambition without any sense that they needn’t end up in Cambridge, Massachusetts—or Providence or New Haven or anywhere else, really—to make a good life. Anne felt sorry for her students for the simple fact that their parents had hired her. A private college-applications consultant. Who thought up such a thing? But she fancied herself able to turn it around—to help these kids out of their stupor and into a fabulous freshman year. And yes, it was true: almost without exception, her students got in. Year after year. Most everywhere.
The mother could be heard breathing on the line. Anne imagined she’d had her Damascene moment just that afternoon, probably at Starbucks, where it so often seemed to happen. Every August Anne would see clutches of mothers standing by the milk and sugar, and she knew by their lowered heads and urgent tones, the high, hoarse, false laughs, that college applications were under discussion. Someone would mention college, the mother whose child had made it safely to the other side and was now loading up at Bed Bath & Beyond while the father worked spider cables around the bumper of the SUV, and for the rest of them the penny would drop: their kids were the seniors now. Anne had seen their cheekbones tighten with the realization. It was what paid her bills, that anxiety.
She’d drive a straw into her drink and return to the sidewalk to retrieve Mitchell, the sublime shepherd who was her only dependent, from his spot in the shade. The Starbucks moms made her sad. She did not think consciously of the messiness of having children but of the women’s shellfishlike bodies—their soft, pale bellies, ineffectually masked by nipped blazers and shiny flats. The fear that this awaited her was real. It was also a handy explanation for why she wasn’t making anything happen in her own life yet, why, at twenty-seven, she was dating a man who cheated like mad and earning her living working with high school kids on their college applications.
It was a good living, though. Not as good as it could have been—one woman in New York City charged something like fifteen thousand dollars for the “package,” which was absurd and made the work sound like it involved conveyor belts and cutting blades—but good. Every year, in late December as the application deadlines were bearing down, Anne swore she would never do it again. And then come spring, the phone calls came.
“Yes, I’ve still got some room,” Anne told the woman. “I’m so sorry, could you give me your name again?”
“Margaret Blanchard,” came the reply. There was a long, freighted pause. Anne was puzzled until the words “call it down” came into her head. Could it be? God, yes. This must be the Margaret Blanchard—life coach extraordinaire. Anne didn’t own a TV, so she hadn’t tracked the woman’s rise from sometime guest to regular fixture to host of her own show, dedicated to teaching women how to gaze into the skies, utter affirmations, and “call down” their dreams. But you couldn’t miss her. Her Prairie Workshops had put Chicago on the self-help map, up there with Esalen and the Berkshires. Legions of women slogged through O’Hare en route to be reborn. Anne had just read somewhere that Oprah herself went round incognito for Sunday-night sessions. Call it down. Or call me, Anne thought, smiling.
Still. “Assuming it’s the right fit for Sadie,” Anne continued, “I can work with her. Let’s arrange to meet and talk—”
“Oh, Sadie’s a great kid,” interrupted Margaret Blanchard. “Really a good kid. She’s bright, B-plus–A-minus across the board except for chemistry, but that’s because the teacher, no one gets A’s from him, he has a self-esteem deficit and needs to project all his mistakes onto the kids, so he cannot proclaim excellence. You know how that goes. Oh, and math, of course, but that’s not her—well, you see, see has a, I wouldn’t call it a disability, per se, out of respect for people with true disabilities—you know, of the legs or what have you, but she does have a learning defect, which is—well, it’s dyscalculia, which is—” She faltered.
“Dyslexia with numbers,” said Anne.
“Right! Oh, great! So you’re familiar with it. That’s great. Okay. And it’s not terrible, she can, you know, add up a receipt, but still, with all the precalculus they throw at them these days, it’s hard. But other than that, I mean, Sadie’s a good athlete. Not college level, but she’s on the bus all over the place with that field-hockey team, she always shows up, and her work ethic is stellar. And she’s got two APs this year, and yearbook, and she does the Habitat house with church over spring break, which is instead, you know, of skiing or whatever, and that’s really her choice. She travels, does a lot of volunteer work around the world. So, I mean, she’s a really good kid. I’m sure you’ll love her.”
Mrs. Blanchard’s tone was elaborately cultivated to raise her daughter up, but in fact it did just the opposite. Anne knew from experience how much that undertow was costing poor Sadie. I’m sure you’ll love her? The girl was falling short. Anne wondered how.
“And here’s the other thing,” continued Margaret Blanchard. “My husband is . . . we have very strong . . . Sadie will be quite a big legacy. Just so you know that.”
“Good news,” said Anne, though the only relevant question was, Would Miss Sadie even want to go to her legacy school? She was already the daughter of a celebrity; an alumni connection could help only so much more. Why on earth hire an independent consultant, too? But then, these were Anne’s clients: the parents who left nothing to chance. They refused to play with a deck that wasn’t stacked. They’d raise a child unvaccinated before they’d consider letting him apply to college unaided.
“So how can I help you?” asked Anne.
“Oh,” Mrs. Blanchard replied, and then paused. “I guess . . . just . . . doing what you do! Though I don’t really know what you do—you know, the essays and all that—but I know Sadie would really benefit from having someone to work with on those. Someone to help her bring her voice forward. She’s one to hide the light under a bushel, I’m afraid. I’ve been working with her on this, but being a girl, it’s so hard not to confuse modesty with self-negation. I’m sure you face that all the time. That’s one of the primary issues I address in my work. Anyway, we’d like to get you started right away. Thing is, I’m going to be traveling through next week, so I wonder if you wouldn’t mind meeting my husband instead? At his office? If you’ll just hold on, I’ll just have our assistant give you the details.”
Anne was about to explain how she always met with the child before taking on a new client, how the initial conversation with parents was followed by a private one with the student, during which Anne shared her own background—a competitive high school, Princeton, graduate degree at Chicago, two years as a prep school English teacher—and invited the student to decide whether or not she’d like to work with her. Anne hated to feel that she was just another imperative, a point in a series that began with toddler swimming and piano lessons and ended with the GMAT or the bar and an appropriate life partner. She worked to make the kids laugh. She told them how exhausted she’d been in high school and how, when she mailed her application to Princeton, she almost missed the deadline and had to FedEx it and spent weeks terrified that the FedEx envelope would tip the committee against her. Then there was the typo she discovered after it was submitted, which brought her to the toilet bowl, though she didn’t actually vomit. This was in the days of paper applications, of course, when students walked to the mailbox with trembling hands. Now they just hit “save and continue” endlessly on their sweat-glossed keyboards and crashed the server of the Common Application Web site during the last dark nights of the calendar year.
To Anne, it was critical that the students request her guidance—the first step toward helping them to assume some authority over the process of applying to college. But Mrs. Blanchard had connected the line to someone called Brenda, who gave the address of a landmark tower in the Loop and an appointed time, and instructions to call up for Gideon Blanchard, and now that became clear, too: Gideon Blanchard, legendary Chicagoan, founding partner, figure twice pixellated on A1 of the Wall Street Journal, political darling, charity-ball stalwart, multimillionaire. Husband of Margaret “Call It Down” Blanchard. Big alumnus somewhere. And father to Sadie, rising senior, aged seventeen.
He would have to be charmed if there was a chance of saving the surely lovable Sadie. She’d be the last, this fall; Anne’s dance card was full.
JUST THAT MORNING, she’d had a first working meeting with a suburban senior called Hunter Pfaff. (His given name was Christopher, but presumably that would’ve been too quotidian a lead-in to Pfaff. ) When Anne pulled into the private drive she’d regretted not bringing Mitchell to laze under the oak trees. The family’s garage had so many doors that it was difficult to know where to park. Pea gravel crunched loudly beneath her heels in the drive. High up in the oaks, locusts blared.
Hunter took his time making his way downstairs. Why did it always seem that the boys were just waking up whenever she arrived? He appeared rumpled and hunching, as though he might fit his entire self into his baseball cap. “Hey,” he called.
“Am I waking you?” Anne asked through the screen.
Hunter stopped on the stairs. “No. What? Dude. No.” He laughed gruffly; there was still a broken-string squeal in his late-adolescent voice. “I had practice early. I’ve been up since six.”
Hunter’s summer was devoted to tennis, which Anne knew to be his best asset. He played number-one singles for his high school team and held a marginal ranking in the Chicago area. His mother’s notes indicated that he wished to pursue recruiting opportunities. The kids who could look forward to being recruited by Division I schools already knew about it by August of their senior year. Anne knew this, and she suspected Hunter knew this, but his mother did not. Nevertheless the sport was a good thing: it showed dedication, and Anne could tell by looking at the boy that he was happiest when he was moving. He jumped the bottom three steps, snapped open the door, and hammered into the hall.
“Did you play well?” she asked.
“Yeah, pretty good.” He led Anne into the dining room at the front of the house, to a long mahogany table with a high gloss. “All the college stuff is in here.”
“Okay,” said Anne. “Where?”
Hunter looked at her and then away. He had recently tried to shave, leaving scalped pimples at his jawline and soft blond fuzz running south from both ears. “Oh, right,” he said, and smiled shyly. “Let me go get it.” He bounded back up the stairs and was gone just long enough for Anne to admire the set of majolica on the breakfront: garish plates shaped like cabbage leaves, unusable for any meal. Those glazed in deep greens and reds resembled cross sections of very large frogs. She wondered what Mrs. Pfaff looked like. They had only spoken by phone.
Hunter returned with a single piece of paper, which he slid across the table to Anne. This was the big essay: his personal statement, presumably whipped out of him over the summer by his mother. While Anne read, cars and trucks could be heard circling the drive, sending a small tide of sprayed gravel lapping at the base of the house. Gardeners, housekeepers, ground crew, deliverymen. Hunter didn’t bother to look toward the door. It seemed no one was home. The enormous dog bed Anne had spotted in the hall remained empty. Once a truck stopped, and a man set a case of sparkling water on the stoop. In part to let Hunter’s world of catered loneliness sink in—as though it might be a clue to him—Anne studied the essay for a long time.
COLLEGE ESSAY
C. HUNTER PFAFF
I first went to Montana on a class trip last summer. In addition to community service work, my group went camping in the Bitterroot Mountain Range. For twelve nights we slept outdoors. The experience sparked my passion for the outdoors and The West. By day, we worked clearing debris from hiking trails and around a reservoir with Rangers guiding us. (The reservoir provided all the drinking water for the towns in the valley so it had to be kept clean, and also water for fighting forest fires.) It was amazing how much trash you can find on trails that are so far from towns. Coke cans, ziplock bags and candy wrappers are just some of the things we collected. We of course learned to “Pack In, Pack Out”; so we were careful to “Leave no Trace.” I never understood the value of these words until I saw the garbage in the trails in those beautiful, pristine mountains. Growing up in Winnetka, Illinois, litter is something I’m just used to.
At night, we made campfires and had lectures by Rangers on the animals of the mountains and ecosystem. Later we drove a long distance to our last stop and past an open field where Mustangs were grazing. Mustangs are wild horses that are not tamed. No one rides them. They have never been bridled. The Ranger told us that when there are storms, the mustangs r
un and run because running is their way of handling their fear. He gave us some grain to hold out over a fence by the road to see if they would come. The Ranger explained that local people come throw hay over the wire to help them because there’s drought due to Global Warming and the grass is too dry to sustain their enormous appetites during the foaling season.
That was last summer and still to this day I feel my experience in Montana helped shape the way I handle thinking about my future at school and beyond. I realize the importance of community service not just at school, but during the summer and everywhere we go. I also realize that there are fragile ecosystems, even in the West, which need our protection. My AP biology class is giving me the tools to learn how to protect those beautiful places. I hope to major in Environmental Science at ____ so I can return to Montana and work with the Rangers in their missions to save our planet’s wild spaces.
Shit, thought Anne. It was dead. He was dead. Here was a solid B-plus boy with solid everything else: SATs in the mid-eightieth percentile, a few 3s and 4s on the APs, tennis, photography, guitar, some student leadership—but whose essay revealed a boy without passion. And there were technical problems too: he’d get nowhere mentioning environmental science because he’d shown no real scientific aptitude. As in the professional world, on college applications affinity and interest had to be aligned. Welcome to the end of childhood. Anne stifled a sigh. This was the kid who gets turned down everywhere, a tanked guppy with some nice streaks of color but nothing different from the zillions swimming alongside him. She held her head low, as though she were still reading, trying to plot a set of optimistic responses. Beside her, she felt Hunter shifting awkwardly in his chair. Had she not had his essay in her hands, she’d have wondered if he was in some sort of pain. A faint body smell, accompanied by gentle heat, rose off of him, as off a roast. He kept pulling off his baseball cap to shape its sueded brim in his fingers. The curls that sprang out beneath it shone. The boy was bursting with life; he could barely stay in his own skin. Why the hell were his sentences so flat? And his voice was nowhere to be found. Not an idea in the draft, save one—but Anne knew it had to be approached tenderly.
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