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A comic chronicle of a year in the life in the college admissions cycle
Coll (karlmarx.com; Rockville Pike) sends up college admissions in an overstuffed social comedy. The novel tracks three juniors-going-on-seniors as they and their families run the gauntlet of SATs, admissions essays, campus tours and rejection letters. It begins with AP Harry (named for the large number of advanced placement courses he takes) and his mother visiting Yates College, a ramshackle school enjoying popularity after U.S. News & World Report erroneously put it on its list of top schools. Also on campus are Harry's classmates Maya Kaluantharana, who'd rather swim laps than prowl library stacks, and Taylor Rockefeller, whose sole criterion for a college is having a private bathroom in her dorm room. As the months tick by and the students wait for acceptance letters, the book meanders through career maneuvering and faculty bed-hopping at Yates, a lawsuit brought against Yates, Harry's obsession with Harvard and Taylor's mother realizing the cause of her daughter's ambivalence toward college. The narrative is heavily peppered with contemporary miscellany (Hurricane Katrina, echoes of the Larry Summers controversy, Facebook, disputes about the SAT's importance), though the mentions often seem like afterthoughts. The surfeit of characters and narrative side trips creates a few pacing logjams, but Coll's deadpan wit and sympathy for her characters are more than redeeming. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Jared Boyce
reviewed Acceptance on December 27, 2008
Acceptance
For the parents of Cecil County's graduating seniors, it's only a few short months until their children are packed up and sent on their way to various colleges, signaling the last number in the college admissions dance. For the parents of incoming juniors and seniors, this dance has just begun.
In her widely acclaimed new novel Acceptance, Susan Coll delivers a witty satire that encourages parents and college hopefuls to take heart. Told from the point of view of three seniors at a highly competitive high school, the novel is the story of their journeys toward "acceptance." There's "AP" Harry who dreams of Harvard and balks at the suggestion of anything less; Taylor, who has a tense relationship with her mother as well as a pathological habit of stealing the neighbor's mail; and Maya, a talented swimmer, mediocre student, and disheartened daughter in an Indian family of Ivy Leaguers. Their lives intersect during a campus visit to Yates College, a third-rate liberal arts school in upstate New York that, by way of a computer glitch, has been listed on U.S. News & World Report's Top 50 list (parents of college bound juniors and seniors know the publication well).
As the year progresses and the three wait to learn their fate, it becomes clear that the journey toward acceptance is indeed more important than acceptance itself. Harry struggles to prove himself in a family whose expectations fall far below his idealized Harvard, while Maya battles expectations that are too high. Taylor is immediately enamored of Yates, but writes an overly confessional admissions essay that she fears might ruin her chances of getting in. Each arrives at a separate, but meaningful conclusion.
Acceptance was born out of Coll's own experiences with the college admissions process after launching three children into the world. Her humor, sensitivity, and abilitly to key in to certain aspects of teen/student culture in the 21st century make this an excellent book for parents and teens to read together.
Other books to guide the process:
Getting In by James Finney Boylan
All Loves Excelling by Josiah Bunting
Getting In Without Freaking Out: The Official College Admissions Guide for Overwhelmed Parents by Arlene Modica Matthews
Peterson's Four Year Colleges, 2007 37th ed.
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