denial happens to good students

Considering Portia's culminating act as an admissions officer leads us to question all of the assertions that she has made about the admissions process throughout the book. I think that her decision to change Jeremiah's admissions decision is not only hypocritical of her, but in line with the behavior of some of the other parents that we have met in the book. All throughout her discussion of the process Portia has claimed that the disappointed parents were one of the worse aspects of her job. Now she has become one of those millennial parents, and it is perhaps this act of finally claiming her child that allows her to experience the closure that she needs so that she can move on with her life.

Her decision to make sure that Jeremiah gets admitted over the thousands and thousands of other students that have come through her office is an instinct that stems from her feelings as his mother. This unethical act of redemption is sort of a paradox. On the one hand, I can see why Portia feels like she has to do this. This kid is her son and she wants him to succeed. Also, I think that in some way Portia feels like the admissions process owes her something; she has spent about twenty years of her life in admissions and admissions has been her life. On the other hand I was angry at the fact that Portia took away the chance of some other teenager that could have taken the Yale boy's spot. She robbed some other bright young person on Princeton's wait list of a chance at an Ivy League education, and all of the recognition and opportunities that come along with that. Her decision might have been personally justifiable, but what she did was unforgivable and unethical. Although, we must ask ourselves, how is this denial any different from the tens of thousands of other denials? Is it because we believe that since Jeremiah didn't make it through the admissions process on his own that he is somehow unworthy of a chance to study at Princeton? I think these questions raise a multitude of other doubts about what a decision to admit really means. It is not a judgment purely of worth, and a denial is not an indication of failure. I think that Portia's reversal is not only indicative of what she owes Jeremiah, but also symbolic of what she feels she owes to all of the amazing kids that she has been forced to turn away over the years. This catharsis is a start of a new life for Portia, and it allows her to experience some closure. She is able to resolve things with Mark, reconcile in her relationship with her mother, and potentially start a new life with John. Catherine, another part of Portia's new life, functions as a kind of foil for what Portia's life could have been like if she had decided to raise her child. I think that this emphasizes the impact that this one decision has made on her life, and kind of takes a position for single parent households, which is unrelated and strange.