Acceptance
Acceptance: A Legendary Guidance Counselor Helps Seven Kids Find the Right Colleges---And Find Themselves David L. Marcus,
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
ISBN: 1594202141
DDC: 378.1610973
Edition: Hardcover; 2009-07-23
Summary:
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist spends a year with a legendary
high school guidance counselor who gets kids into the right colleges
by focusing on self-discovery rather than test scores, grades, and
the other traditional tools of the tradeGwyeth Smith, known as
Smitty, has made a national reputation by flouting the conventions of
the college application ritual. He often steers kids from the SAT to
the ACT, which he considers a more straightforward test that produces
higher scores. He urges parents to home in on hidden bargains, scour
the country for scholarships, and challenge financial aid offices
rather than take out large loans. He will sometimes talk a seeming
shoo-in candidate out of setting her sights on the prestigious Ivy
League while goading another long-shot student into aiming for that
same Ivy League school. His unorthodox approach is grounded on the
principle that getting into college shouldnÂ’t just be about getting
in; it should be a kidÂ’s first great moment of self-discovery. David
L. Marcus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former education writer for U.S.
News & World Report, follows Smitty and “his” kids around Oyster
Bay High, a diverse public school in Long Island, New York, as he
works his unique magic on their applications and their lives.
SmittyÂ’s kids run the gamut from the sweet but pathologically
disorganized boy next door to the valedictorian who applies to
twenty-eight schools. As the year unfolds, Smitty deals in his own
ingenious way with almost every complication that can bedevil the
applications process. What about the kid who doesnÂ’t test well? The
kid who plunges into depression after being rejected by Columbia? The
overachieving Korean American boy worried about reverse
discrimination? Smitty has answers for all of them. While Smitty
excels at easing the pressure of the college hunt, his success comes
from imposing a different—and deeper—challenge. He makes kids
articulate (orally and in writing) their profoundest fears, their
drawbacks, their secret hopes. In short, he makes them figure out who
they are. Along the way, he uses his savantÂ’s knowledge of
AmericaÂ’s thirty-six hundred colleges and universities to pair each
student with the right one. He sidesteps the applications industrial
complex, with its slick Web sites, private essay coaches, and
obsessive focus on metrics. He brings to the college search
counterintuitive insight and even wisdom—attributes that thousands
of students and their parents, frustrated with the excesses of the
process, will find useful and inspiring.
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