The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays

by Irena Smith

I refuse the middle schoolers, because I cannot in good conscience sit in a room with a twelve-year-old and discuss college planning, even if my advice comes down to “read a lot and do stuff you love to do,”

Before I became a parent, I saw the world much like my students’ parents do: as a logical, predictable place where certain actions yield predictable consequences. Having children upended that notion; it’s entirely possible, it turns out, for two intelligent, high-functioning, ambitious people to have not one, not two, but three children whose neurological wiring makes it extraordinarily difficult for them to function in the world, and whose trajectory, as a result, will be anything but linear.

Let’s face it: in the drama of our own lives, we all want to be both deserving and lucky. We want to be Odysseus, not the suitors; Cinderella, not the stepsisters; Charlie Bucket, not Veruca Salt or Augustus Gloop. And then David and I became parents, and parenthood undid us. It left us bruised and battered and humbled. It taught us things about ourselves we would have preferred not to know: that we were flawed, that we were vain, that we cared more about what others thought than was probably healthy, that we sometimes sought refuge in work, which felt easier than parenting three children we couldn’t understand. But we also learned how fiercely we were capable of loving, how hard we were willing to fight, how deeply proud we would be of their victories, large as well as small.

when they say, “If I take AP Biology and become president of Key Club, would I get into Stanford?” You will not get into Stanford if you pursue that line of questioning. The students I’ve seen get into Stanford are usually too busy being extraordinary to care whether they get into Stanford or not. Nobody needs to get into Stanford, but it does help to stretch yourself, and not necessarily by taking all the AP classes you can get your hands on. You might be extraordinarily kind, like the girl who spent two years in a senior home teaching the residents how to use Facebook and Instagram to connect with their digital-native grandchildren because she realized that her own grandmother was desperately lonely. Or extraordinarily brilliant, like the kid who patented an invention that converted something into something else.