The People We Tried to Impress

Wanted us to impress them.

They were not hoping that we would fail and did not take pleasure in denying us. They genuinely tried to connect with us and treated our applications like the precious gateways to our stories, dreams, and goals that they were.

At least this is the profile of a college admissions officer that the main character of the book Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz, Portia Nathan, supports. Portia really loves her job and admits to sometimes letting herself get too attached to her applicants and too moved by their life stories. Portia is a lovable character—she has the right amount of passion, quirkiness and humor.

I really love this novel so far. I love that it shows that the nameless, faceless people we directed our essays towards and tried to win over were really neither nameless nor faceless. It shows that these admission officers try really hard to create the most passionate, most intelligent, most diverse, and most well-rounded class that they possibly can.

Unfortunately, I must admit that Princeton was a childhood dream of mine and the only school that denied me. The funny thing is that I was not surprised or really overly upset at this rejection because I recognized my limitations and my lack of the extraordinary. This is why I must say the part where Portia describes the essay of the girl who was “smart enough to know about, or at least imagine, the ones she would be compared with, who had been handed so much less than she, and done so much more with what they had, while the children of privilege were penalized for having been fortunately born, comfortably raised, and excellent in all the ordinary ways,” really resonated with me. I was that girl that realized I was not good enough but still applied because I really wanted it at the time. I remember writing a number of times that I realized that my life so far had been unremarkable, but that I knew one day I would change the world, and that I would gain the tools to do so at whichever university I was directing this message to. I love the line that finishes this paragraph about the ordinary girl: “Sometimes those were the ones who got to Portia the most.”

I had a Portia at Carnegie Mellon, UVA, William and Mary, and Cornell—somebody who saw that just because I am ordinary right now does not mean that I do not have the potential to do something remarkable and note worthy one day. I got to them.

I am really intrigued by this book, and I can’t wait to read more.