Helpful Score: 4
Really not too impressed. It seemed long and took me forever to read. She goes on and on about the reviewer process until you're like "enough already." The last 100 pages are actually the best, most interesting part of the book, when the character develops a small amount of personality. It does let you know something about what college admission officers look for, but it may tell you more of what not to do and what not to expect than anything else. It's a lot like reading about someone with a really ugly, hard job you're really glad you don't have.
Helpful Score: 1
Interesting a first, great glimpse into admission process at ivy league schools. Book is often redundant and predictable and is too long. Characters could be fleshed out a bit more and less irritating. I liked the excerpts from the students personal statements that start each chapter,
Certainly the job of admissions officer is one I'd given little thought to, until I read this story. I enjoyed reading about this taxing job & appreciated the author's descriptions, although some were very wordy. At times, I wanted the author to pick up the pace & get to the heart of the matter. Portia's a complex character & the author gives you lots of insight to her thought process & opinions.
This book engaged me totally from the first chapter. I worked at a university in the same building as the admissions offfice, so I am familiar with the rigors and joys of that office. I also remember gaggles of prospective students on campus tours with anxious parents in tow. Admission captured all of the excitement, angst and hope of adolescents making application to Princeton. It is extremely well researched and written. Anyone who has ever applied to a college or university or had a child who made application will be immediately drawn into this fascinating novel. Paragraphs from fictional essays that head each chapter will make every reader remember his or her diffficult struggle to find just the right experience to capture the attention of the admissions office.
Portia is an admissions officer at Princeton sharing a home and a long-term relationship with an English professor. Her assignment is to cover the northeast to recruit students and answer their questions about Princeton. She is a fiercely independent and private person with the loneliness that often accompanies those personality characteristics. Her past and present collide on a recruiting trip to New Hampshire, and the novel evolves very cleverly from there.
I haven't read Korelitz's previous novels, but plan to do so. I haven't been this impressed with an author in a very long time.
Portia is an admissions officer at Princeton sharing a home and a long-term relationship with an English professor. Her assignment is to cover the northeast to recruit students and answer their questions about Princeton. She is a fiercely independent and private person with the loneliness that often accompanies those personality characteristics. Her past and present collide on a recruiting trip to New Hampshire, and the novel evolves very cleverly from there.
I haven't read Korelitz's previous novels, but plan to do so. I haven't been this impressed with an author in a very long time.
This unabridged audiobook on 15 CD's like usual was so much better than the movie. The book is a serious account of how admission is granted into elite Universities with humor added in. The movie shredded this notice and tried to turn the movie into a comedy.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it's tales of interpersonal relationships.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it's tales of interpersonal relationships.
As a mother it made me think about how decisions have such a lasting impact. A little on the drawn out side, but still engaging.
As a product of a prep school environment and an Ivy League education( Yale, Brown), I couldn't wait to read this novel about a Princeton college admissions officer. I was sorely disappointed. Originally I had planned to send this book to my niece, a Princeton grad, but I have to admit, this book was so slow moving and mired in boring minutiae, I could not do it. The writing is dense and detail-oriented, to the point of making the reader want to tear her hair out! Vast pages of dense, uninterrupted text, barely broken into paragraphs, with endless details about working in the admissions office. Long, boring, and unreadable.
Slow and mired in too much detail. Gets better toward end. She's a marvelous and gifted writer, but sometimes she needs to streamline it.
