Acceptance Hardback - 2009
by Marcus, David L.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist spends a year with a legendaryhigh school guidance counselor who gets kids into the right collegesby focusing on self-discovery rather than test scores, grades, and theother traditional tools of the trade
Gwyeth Smith, known as Smitty, has made a nationalreputation by flouting the conventions of the college applicationritual. He often steers kids from the SAT to the ACT,which he considers a more straightforward test that produceshigher scores. He urges parents to home in on hidden bargains,scour the country for scholarships, and challenge financial aidoffices rather than take out large loans. He will sometimes talka seeming shoo-in candidate out of setting her sights on theprestigious Ivy League while goading another long-shot studentinto aiming for that same Ivy League school. His unorthodoxapproach is grounded on the principle that getting into collegeshouldn't just be about getting in; it should be a kid's first greatmoment of self-discovery.
David L. Marcus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning formereducation writer for U.S. News & World Report, follows Smittyand "his" kids around Oyster Bay High, a diverse public schoolin Long Island, New York, as he works his unique magic ontheir applications and their lives. Smitty's kids run the gamutfrom the sweet but pathologically disorganized boy next doorto the valedictorian who applies to twenty-eight schools. Asthe year unfolds, Smitty deals in his own ingenious way withalmost every complication that can bedevil the applicationsprocess. What about the kid who doesn't test well? The kidwho plunges into depression after being rejected by Columbia?The overachieving Korean American boy worried about reversediscrimination? Smitty has answers for all of them.
While Smitty excels at easing the pressure of thecollege hunt, his success comes from imposing a different-anddeeper-challenge. He makes kids articulate (orally and in writing)their profoundest fears, their drawbacks, their secret hopes.In short, he makes them figure out who they are. Along the way,he uses his savant's knowledge of America's thirty-six hundredcolleges and universities to pair each student with the right one.He sidesteps the applications industrial complex, with its slickWeb sites, private essay coaches, and obsessive focus on metrics.He brings to the college search counterintuitive insight andeven wisdom-attributes that thousands of students and theirparents, frustrated with the excesses of the process, will finduseful and inspiring.
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- Title Acceptance
- Author Marcus, David L.
- Binding Hardback
- Edition unknown
- Pages 272
- Language EN
- Publisher Penguin Press HC, The, New York
- Date 2009-07-23
- ISBN 9781594202148
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