Acceptance

I just finished reading the book Acceptance by Susan Coll. It's a fictional novel about the college admissions process, with alternating points of view from various students (the overachiever, the athlete, the emo girl), parents and even a college admissions officer. Even though there are a lot of characters, each character is very well developed. The book takes a humorous, slightly cynical view of the whole process and society's increasing obsession with it, which I think a lot of people can relate to. I know I can. I went to a high school very similar to the one in the book - a competitive suburban public high school where kids fill their schedules with AP classes and in order to be in the top 10% of your class, you have to have higher than a 4.0 GPA. The book also makes some very astute observations, such as the fact that when students apply to more schools (in order to ensure, in their minds, that they get in somewhere) this is counterintuitive because more applications make each college more selective, therefore lowering your chances of getting in.

I recommend this book to anyone who has gone through the admissions process. But if you haven't yet and you think you're going to in the future, perhaps you might want to hold off on reading this book because it might make you a little nervous.

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