Admission (7 page)

Looking at this group, variously reclined on the couches or cross-legged on the floor, every one of them alert to the strain
in the room, she found that the language for this occasion simply eluded her. She knew how to speak to prep school students,
to first-generation kids from all parts of the globe, to magnet school students in the inner cities. She knew how to speak
to stressed-out kids in the affluent suburbs who looked at her with pleading, hopeless expressions:
Please let me in
and
I know you won’t,
in woeful tandem. She had talked to groups of homeschooled kids, whose parents kept vigilant watch at the edges of the room,
and foreign students, hurled from afar into American boarding schools or exchange programs, who hadn’t seen their parents
in years but understood that all of it had been for this. She knew when to be a salesman, a teacher, a counselor, or a motivational
speaker. She knew how to hold hands and how to crack the whip. But these kids… she was having trouble making them out. What
were they? Not hippies or Goths. Not scholars per se. They were fearless, that was clear. And rude. And curious, at least
some of them. And not remotely hesitant to challenge her.

“It’s an interesting question,” Portia said uncertainly. “And your alternative, sitting in a room reading books all day, does
sound very cost-effective. But it also strikes me as a little lonely. And not truly rigorous, if you think about it. After
all, once you’ve read all those books, don’t you want to talk to somebody else who’s reading them, too? Or do you want to
have the kind of education where your initial impressions are never challenged? Where you’re never asked to refine your opinions
or actually prove your theories? There’s something very exciting about a community of scholars, you know.”

“This is a community of scholars,” the girl said a little petulantly. “We can go through our lives seeking out communities
of scholars. What you’re talking about is a corporation, no different than a bank or an oil company. Only your product is
a piece of paper with some Latin on it. You let people pay you tuition and then you give them the piece of paper. Princeton
graduates have a lot of status, don’t they?”

“Define status,” Portia said, idly wondering whether the charming John was ever going to come to her rescue.

“In the consumerist culture. In the corporate culture. They move into high-paying jobs where they shift numbers around on
a piece of paper or a computer screen, and they live in privileged enclaves with guards at the gate, and they produce the
next generation to go to places like Princeton. Or have I been reading too much John Cheever?”

Portia laughed despite herself. “Can one ever read too much John Cheever?”

“It’s just I think we should be educating ourselves to be citizens of the world, you know? Not just citizens of the guarded,
suburban enclave.”

“Well, I happen to agree with that,” Portia said tersely. “We, as a university, happen to agree with that. That’s why we offer
our students so many study abroad options, including our Princeton in Africa and Princeton in Asia programs. In fact, our
university motto is ‘Princeton in the Nation’s Service and the Service of All Nations.’ We’re all about making citizens of
the world.”

“But you can’t
make
citizens of the world,” the girl said with annoying passion. “That’s just my point. We have to
become
citizens.
Naturally.
”

“That’s a very subtle distinction,” Portia said. “Now, I’d like to—”

“No. I don’t think so. I think the American university has become a sausage factory, turning out substandard product. That’s
what I love about this school. We follow our own pursuit of awareness, wherever that takes us. We come out whole people, not
sausages.”

“And what, as whole people, do you intend to do with your lives?” Portia said testily.

“Live them,” said a boy on another couch. “Live them well, tread lightly on the earth. Leave the planet better than we found
it.”

“That sounds very laudable. How will you leave the planet better? Will you eradicate disease? You’ll need a medical degree.
If you want to create new drug therapies, you’re going to have to be a research scientist. That’s a PhD. Want to defend the
innocent and secure justice for all? I regret to inform you that you’ll have to go to law school. Maybe you want to lift the
indigent out of poverty. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but a career in business might be the best way to make that
happen. There are plenty of college graduates out there living good lives, treading lightly on the planet, and ardently hoping
to leave the world better than they found it. We’re looking for those people. There’s nothing wrong with sitting in a room
for the rest of your life, reading books for your own self-improvement, but if your goal is really to increase your understanding
of the world and make it a better place to live, then I think you’d better continue your education after high school.”

“Rosa Parks increased our understanding of the world and made it a better place to live,” said one of the girls from the corner.
She had a dusky gray complexion and beaded cornrows.

“She did indeed,” Portia said, sighing. “I’m not implying that education is the only path to making a contribution. But if
contribution is your goal, why would you choose to impede yourself, or limit your ability to make an impact? And consider
this, please. A college class can give us a clearer picture than the one we might get sitting alone in that room with our
books. For example—and I’m going to hijack your own example, if you don’t mind—Rosa Parks, remarkable as she was, was not
the first black American to refuse to give up her seat on public transportation and find herself in a jail cell. And her act
was not the basis of the lawsuit that ended segregation on buses. Seven months before Rosa Parks, there was another black
woman who was taken to prison for not moving when a white person wanted her seat. Her name was Aurelia Browder, and she filed
suit against the city of Montgomery, Alabama. And that’s the lawsuit that struck down segregation, not Parks’s lawsuit. Now,”
she said, surveying their subdued, even stricken faces, “have you wandered into the wrong meeting? Am I really here to talk
about the civil rights movement and only pretending to try to sell you on the idea of applying to Princeton University? No.
The only point I’m making by telling you about Aurelia Browder is that I wouldn’t have known about her myself if I hadn’t
taken an African-American history course when I went to college. College is where you go beyond the official version. College
is where you read the sources and look past the canon. Now, Rosa Parks was a heroine, no question about it, but who thinks
we ought to be just as impressed by Aurelia Browder?”

There were stray nods. A couple of them raised a hand.

“Could you have learned about her on your own? Sure. But you didn’t, did you? In my college class, we read the trial transcripts.
We read the contemporary newspaper accounts. Our professor had written a book about Bob Moses. Who was Bob Moses?”

Blank looks.

“Okay. I rest my case. Now, if I’ve convinced you to devote the next four years of your life to higher education, I’d like
to please move on to one particular institute of higher education. So if there are no further questions—”

“Actually,” said her antagonist from the couch, “I still don’t understand why you’re here. I mean, isn’t Princeton already
competitive? Why do you need more applicants? Or do you want even more people to apply so you can let in an even smaller percentage?
I mean, isn’t that the measure of status for elite colleges? That it’s harder to get into your place than Harvard or whatever?
Why is it necessary for even more of us to participate in this national hysteria about college admissions?”

It was actually quite an impressive speech, and—as it happened—uncomfortably close to the bone. Portia regarded the girl,
saying nothing for a moment. She was thinking: I must get her name. This kid was smart, opinionated, stubborn, and thoroughly
relentless. Portia could just imagine her in Congress, not that such an acerbic character could get elected to anything. But
a mover and a shaker, definitely: Today Princeton, tomorrow the world.

“I came here,” said Portia, “to let you know about us, so that if you’re considering higher education, you could consider
us. Just as we would like to have the opportunity to consider you.”

“Oh, right. You mean you’d like to have the opportunity of considering our applications so you can reject them. What are the
chances of getting into Princeton these days?”

“We’re running about one in ten admits,” Portia said tersely. “We have an enormously talented applicant pool, and a very difficult
job assembling a class.”

“You mean unless the applicant happens to be really rich and just gave a soccer stadium to the school. Then maybe it’s not
so difficult.”

“That’s not accurate,” Portia said, getting seriously annoyed.

“Wouldn’t you agree that the ideal university ought to be a purely need-blind, influence-blind, affluence-blind meritocracy?”

“Ah,” she said dryly. “But aren’t there many ways to define merit? Unless you’d like to make it a strict question of numbers.
But should we really be relying on standardized testing? And is it, in fact, standardized when some students can afford expensive
courses to raise their scores and others can’t? But let’s suppose you did have a single, reliable testing system, that isn’t
going to solve the problem of who’s going to throw the shot put on the track team, and who’s going to play tuba in the marching
band, and who’ll be writing the songs for the
Triangle Show
. Princeton is a community of many parts. We don’t just need molecular biology majors and tennis players. We need Gregorian
chanters and break dancers. We need people for the math club and the mime troop and the Nepalese student association. We need
somebody to chair the gay Republicans group and somebody to lead the Democrats for Fiscal Responsibility. Now listen,” she
told them. “I could go on talking about Princeton till the cows come home. Literally.” She laughed and was relieved to note
a few actual smiles. “But before we go any further, I want you to look at this short film. Afterwards, you may know that Princeton
isn’t for you, in which case I’m sure there are chores that need to be done around here. Am I right?” She turned to John.

“Always chores,” he said, looking amused.

“But if you have questions, and some of you might, then we can talk more. Okay?”

She had survived her hazing, she saw. The consensus was: They would now watch the film.

She tried to angle the laptop so that the sun, visibly sinking now at the far end of the field, did not glare across the screen,
but even in the sixteen minutes it lasted, the group on the floor first leaned and then shifted, inches, feet, chasing the
shadow. She watched them as they watched the students on the small computer screen rhapsodize and crow. She inspected the
students of the Quest School, looked at their faces, then at their bodies (alert or drooping, leaning against one another),
then at their clothing, which on this closer inspection was impressively varied. There was quite a bit of tie-dye, of course,
and T-shirts with band logos, and the inevitable jeans, but there was also an Asian girl in a frilly dress and Mary Janes,
a wide-eyed boy with a chestnut-colored forelock wearing a smart jacket and khakis (he would not have appeared out of place
at a Deerfield master’s tea). There was a girl in blond pigtails who wore a loose, zip-up jumpsuit with a gas station’s name
imprinted on the breast and a name in embroidered cursive: “Frank.” Another girl, plump and pale with a cap of thin red hair,
wore a sweater set that might have come from the Talbot’s on Nassau Street, a stone’s throw from Portia’s office.

That these kids, individually and collectively, had refused to meet her expectations was, after all, not their fault, but
she actually felt a little annoyed with them for confounding her. She had weathered nearly sixteen years of teenagers, always
at just this moment in their lives, always coming up to the same fork in the road. They variously charged ahead or hung behind
or else stumbled along because they couldn’t care less what happened to them, but in essence they had never changed. Not in
hundreds of school visits, and hundreds of thousands of applications, and an untold number of unscripted, unscheduled encounters,
when people found out what her job was and dragged over their astonishing niece or godchild or prodigy offspring to talk to
her. She knew how to recognize the good girls and the diligent boys, the rebels and fuck-ups, the artsy kids who knew nothing
about art and the ones who had art burning inside them. She could spot the blinkered athletes and the pillars of some future
community, the strivers of every stripe and shade, the despairing and despaired of. Almost every single one of them occupied
a place that had been previously occupied by someone else, and someone else before that—someone elses who looked like them
and sounded like them and thought like them. Sixteen years of drummers and different drummers, poets and players. But these
students… they were not taking their seats. She was having trouble putting them in their places.

When the film ended, most of them—apparently taking Portia at her word—got up and left, but a few walked straight over to
her and began talking. There seemed to be no medium, happy or otherwise, between “I care” and “I don’t care.” The ones who
approached her wanted to know how to apply to Princeton. They wanted to know the essence of what the admissions committee
looked for in an applicant and what made them admit the one out of ten and reject the other nine. (She had to repress her
natural response; it was so artlessly asked.) They asked what was meant by the idea of diversity and what the political mood
of the campus was. The Asian girl asked if she could study fashion at Princeton. (“No,” Portia told her. “But you can study
art and culture, which are necessary to understanding fashion. And you can create a senior thesis that incorporates fashion
design.”) The girl in the gas station jumpsuit was writing a novel and wanted to know if she could submit that instead of
a traditional application. “You can submit it as part of your application,” Portia said. Would it matter, someone asked her
in a quiet, urgent voice, if both parents worked in a supermarket?