Acceptance: A Novel [Hardcover]

Susan Coll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2007

A comic chronicle of a year in the life in the college admissions cycle.

 

It's spring break of junior year and the college admissions hysteria is setting in. "AP" Harry (so named for the unprecedented number of advanced placement courses he has taken) and his mother take a detour from his first choice, Harvard, to visit Yates, a liberal arts school in the Northeast that is enjoying a surge in popularity as a result of a statistical error that landed it on the top-fifty list of the U.S. News & World Report rankings. There, on Yates's dilapidated grounds, Harry runs into two of his classmates from Verona High, an elite public school in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There's Maya Kaluantharana, a gifted athlete whose mediocre SAT scores so alarm her family that they declare her learning disabled, and Taylor Rockefeller, Harry's brooding neighbor, who just wants a good look at the dormitory bathrooms.

With the human spirit of Tom Perrotta and the engaging honesty of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, Susan Coll reveals the frantic world of college admissions, where kids recalibrate their GPAs based on daily quizzes, families relocate to enhance the chance for Ivy League slots, and everyone is looking for the formula for admittance. Meanwhile, Yates admissions officer Olivia Sheraton sifts through applications looking for something--anything--to distinguish one applicant from the next. For all, the price of admission requires compromise; for a few, the ordeal blossoms into an unexpected journey of discovery.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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 © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—This book follows a handful of high school students throughout the year leading up to their graduation. It is a harrowing and hilarious story told from the points of view of the teens and their families as they navigate the maze leading to the holy grail of acceptance by a major university. Coll celebrates and skewers the people and the politics waged on both sides of the application process as the students pick their dream colleges and these institutions either pick them back or toss them onto the scrap heap of second- and third-tier safety schools. The characters evolve through their trials and learn about themselves and one another and accept the loss of one dream while embracing another. They include Harry, a scarily normal overachiever; Maya, the talented but seemingly least gifted of a wealthy Indian family; and Taylor, a girl teetering on the verge of self-abuse or self-discovery. These are teens who come from fairly affluent families and schools. They are treated with respect and love by the author, and readers will return the favor. YAs interested in the college selection process will find this book illuminating as they see in it their own fears acted out and resolved. It reads a bit like a Stephen King novel minus the horrific ending.—Will Marston, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374237190
• ISBN-13: 978-0374237196
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #781,904 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Coll is the author of four novels. Acceptance, a satire of the college admissions process, was made into a 2009 television movie starring Joan Cusack and Mae Whitman. Her work has appeared in publications including the International Herald Tribune, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. She lives with her husband in Washington DC and New York, and is the mother of three children----and she's a three-time Beach Week survivor.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A much-needed humorous take on a stressful process..a must read!, March 16, 2007

By 

GFSmith99 (LA, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Acceptance: A Novel (Hardcover)

As the season of thick/thin envelopes is officially upon us, I highly recommend "acceptance" as a way of keeping it all in perspective--especially if you suspect your children are secretly referring to you as a helicopter parent. Coll effectively captures both the children's and adults' points of views (although, as in real life, sometimes the young sound a lot more sane than us "adults"...) in a really compelling, and very, very funny story about the "price of admission." Five stars!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Inside Look at College Admissions, May 12, 2007

By 

Sody Clements (Oklahoma City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Acceptance: A Novel (Hardcover)

Our extended family just completed a year of angst/drama/anticipation as my niece applied to colleges and had the good fortune (and agony!) of having to decide between several outstanding choices. I bought the book thinking I would give it to her parents. But I read a few pages and got caught up in it myself. The storyline of several families with college-bound students was humorous and poignant. But I was most captivated by the story of the admissions officer and her selection process! I felt like I was getting a good peek at the mysterious and baffling admissions system.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hiaasen-esque Dialogue and Crazy Suburbs Make You Laugh, May 28, 2007

By 

Miami Bob "Resurgent Reading" (Miami, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Acceptance: A Novel (Hardcover)

For the middle or upper middle class parent of the 21st century, the statements made in this book are not only true, but bitterly true.

Parents of today are addicted to the blogging statements and statistics spewed from the most conventional sources: college confidential, college board, Fiske's, Barron's, U.S. News and World Report and more. If you did not know all of the above-recited sources, there are only two conclusions: you don't have college-age children and their importance does not thankfully exist in your world, or you are deep in doo doo when it comes to handling yourself at cocktail parties in the suburbs like Verona (a D.C. suburb) - the setting of this fictional novel.

The main characters are not average, but they are typical. A minority student who is a jock (swimmer named Maya), an "uber" kid who has been aiming for Harvard since his mother's gynecologist burped him (AP Harry) and a mixed up teenager (imagine) whose emotional conflicts are hampering her life for the stars - as her top 15% and great SAT scores may deliver her to - and do I dare say this? - an unknown LAC named Yates (Taylor).

These three kids and dysfunctional families (typical suburb families) are followed throughout this book. The dialogue and events remind me of Carl Hiaasen - there is real wackiness in these pages.

One statement is hard to tell the parents or the children - there is more than one school for the child. They don't know this their junior year. And, this book which divides chapters by months from the spring of the junior year to the summer of senior year, delivers the characters and the reader to the realization that the previously enunciated statement is true. Some of the characters do not get into the "castle in the sky" school of choice, but so what. Other schools, they learn, are also great. Maybe greater. Maybe better? Whoa, do people at 17 or 18 realize this? Better yet, do their helicopter parents realize this? You will have to read the book to obtain an answer.

Many of the references in the book show the author's deep knowledge of this area. From study? Probably not - any parent seeking to place their child (which the cover admits the author recently did) into college learns the system, the nuances, the craziness, and the madness associated with the college-entrance world of today.

For those who are in this muddle or about to enter it, this book will do two things: (1) make you laugh and actually educate you on a few fine points; or (2) make you think this is too wacky to be true. Unfortunately, each point is only too reflective of the truths lived in suburbs like Verona in 2007.