<p>Good Morning Everyone. Picked this up last night at the bookstore. It was on the new arrival table and peaked my interest. Only 50 pages in, but very, very intriguing book. (not the easiest read though) Author attended Dartmouth and was an admission file reader for Princeton in 2006 and 2007. Her book outlines the tangled web of Admission in the Ivy League. So far talks about legacy, grades, and excellent candidates vs outstanding candidates. Maybe more review when I'm done. Anyone else read it?</p>
<p>Last thing we need is another book glorifying the Ivy League. Haven’t they already done enough to ruin this country?</p>
<p>Did I read where the OP said the book glorified the Ivy League? Seems like the last admissions blockbuster was all about Duke! I doubt we can blame an athletic conference for ruining the country, unless we want to focus on March Madness or something.</p>
<p>Don’t be so silly. We all know Ivy League stands for FAR more than an athletic conference.</p>
<p>It’s a NOVEL. </p>
<p>So, Barrons- I didn’t realize you thought the Ivy League schools were a problem for society. Isn’t that a pretty absurd position?</p>
<p>A thinly disguised novel by a former Princeton admissions rep who is a --Princeton admissions rep in the book. Yes she folds in a pointless love story.
As to your other question:
Not really if you look at the facts. Huge sense of entitlement and and grossly inflated pay leads to taking excess risk and crashes US economy. This is the third Wall Street caused recession in the last 20 years. Each was based on fundamental excess greed (junk bonds, tech bubble, housing bubble) leading to a crash. Rest of US left with 201K and a big hole in the economy. All the street criminals put together have done less harm.</p>
<p>And what percentage of Ivy League graduates work on Wall Street? Probably a higher percentage than Big 10 grads, but certainly not 50% or more. How about all the doctors, nurses, professors and engineers with Ivy school degrees? Are they the downfall of society? Do they all come out with a huge sense of entitlement? Do Chicago, Stanford, MIT and Duke grads have a totally different mindset?</p>
<p>I am not excited about the book, but I’m also annoyed by people who say Ivy League students ruined Wall Street, and are therefore uniformly “bad” people. Here are my reasons:</p>
<p>1) It is silly to write of all Ivy League schools based on their participation in an athletic conference!</p>
<p>2) People from certain schools that are in the Ivy League have made some fantastic contributions in science, politics, and math. For instance, if you read about recent Nobel Laureates in physics, medicine, etc. many were from Harvard/Princeton. If you want to judge a school based on a small population why not choose these people?</p>
<p>3) Many students from “Ivy League” schools went to Wall Street because they could. If students from other schools had gone to Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, etc. (as many did), they probably would have acted (or did act) in the same way. People don’t join these firms with the intent to screw other people over! They join them because the firms are considered prestigious and offer money. And I’m sure some students from other schools would do the same if given the opportunity.</p>
<p>Please don’t write off a group of eight relatively unrelated schools just because Wall Street firms recruited from them heavily. Many of the biggest frauds recently (Bernie Madoff, John Thain) did not attend Ivy League schools as undergraduates. Madoff attended the University of Alabama and Hofstra! I certainly wouldn’t write these schools off just because he is an alum.</p>
<p>New to CC, I am surprised by the negative reaction to this book. It was extremely well written. In a novel format, it shared many of the facts and opinions that are popular on this board. I would recommend it highly to anyone wanting to know more about Ivy League admissions, and who wishes to be entertained at the same time.</p>
<p>Thought it was kind of one dimensional beach reading, myself. didn’t see it as that well written.</p>
<p>We we may have different definitions of well written. Good beach reading to me is not necessarily antithetical to being well written. :)</p>
<p>I bet most of the numbers guys on Wall Street are really from MIT!</p>
<p>barrons, my oh my. Now anyone who attends an Ivy League school has a sense of entitlement? The Ivy League graduates are to blame for the economy? My, these comments reflect more your own feelings than any reality. I feel like I have to apologize to you that I have a graduate degree from Harvard or that my kid went to Brown. But what do you have against someone who is a good student and opts to attend a very selective challenging school? You paint anyone who does that as feeling entitled? Geez, we both were grateful for the opportunity and loved our schools and our time there. Now, no matter what we do, if our fields have a negative thing happen, it is our fault? Do you respect anyone who does good things who came out of the Ivy League? And is everyone on Wall Street from the Ivy League?</p>
<p>Barrons posts were last year. Maybe he’s mellowed! 
The stock market IS up, after all.</p>
<p>I read that book. Interesting insight on the admissions process, but thought the basic plot was bizarre and ending was weird.</p>
<p>Terrible, terrible book. It offers no insight and is terribly written for a novel. Waste of money. Give it a few months before it’s $0.01 used on Amazon.</p>
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<p>I’ll agree with the “not necessarily.”</p>
<p>I thought the book was weak and disappointing, also. I just read a better one called “Getting In” by Stabiner.</p>
<p>The only part of the book that interested me was an early discussion on what to include in your personal essay and later on the process by which the committee determined who made the cut. As a novel, it was weak. I read the whole book, but I found myself skipping pages.</p>
<p>Well, we’re all different. Here is the author’s website, with some links to positive reviews about both the quality and the insight into the process. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.jeanhanffkorelitz.com/biblio.html#reviews[/url]”>http://www.jeanhanffkorelitz.com/biblio.html#reviews</a></p>
<p>This, from the LA Times: “Well-written, well-plotted and extremely satisfying, ‘Admission’ marks another step forward for a writer whose accomplishments grow more impressive with each book.”</p>
<p>This from the New Yorker (it speaks to your point about the wierd plot point, boiledgg): “Although the reader may unravel the mystery of Portia’s past before the plot does, the novel gleams with acute insights into what most consider a deeply mysterious process.”</p>