Highly Selective Admission: Does Art Imitate Life?

Does the movie "Admission" depict the admission process at American colleges/universities correctly?

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I was asked to answer this question by someone on the website Quora.com. As is virtually always the case, an adaptation of a book to the screen means cutting out a great deal in order to make the film fit the necessary length requirements. It is one of the primary reasons most say the book is better than the film.

The film Admission is, unfortunately not a great film on any level. The chemistry between the actors is pretty weak and the plot has been reduced so that most of the characters are flat and most of the action is truncated or incomplete. The meat of the novel is, to me, that it has the ring of truth to it when it comes to admitting students to highly selective colleges. There are some parts of the book the film is based on that are exceptionally good when describing what happens at Princeton or any other highly selective university in terms of admission decisions. A friend of mine who worked  in admission at a highly selective liberal arts college (and is a great writer himself) was a consultant for the author of the book.

I would recommend anyone interested in highly selective admission to read the book-- not for the plot and especially not the part where Portia, the central character, breaks all the rules when it comes to admission. But her (Portia’s and, by proxy, the author) comments about getting into Princeton are actually far more honest than one would hear at a real information session. While the book is slightly outdated much of what Portia says here and in a number of other places throughout the book will give readers the kind of inside view they will rarely get anywhere else:

Tina Fey as Portia in "Admission"

“I’m telling you this,” she said, “because I want you to think carefully about what you really want out of the next four years. Ivy League institutions may be wrapped up in one big ribbon, but these are very different institutions, offering very different experiences. Don’t just apply to these eight schools because they created an athletic conference in 1954. 

You might be happiest in a huge university, or in a little college. You might want to see an entirely different part of the country when you go to university, or even a different part of the world. And let’s not forget, some people just don’t want to work that hard in college. They want to go, learn a little bit, play a little Frisbee, and get a halfway decent job when it’s over. Not everyone is looking for the kind of intellectual environment Princeton is offering, and if you’re not, I urge you to save yourself the effort involved in applying, not to mention the application fee. And I urge you to spare us the very distressing task of having to reject your application. 

Please be honest with yourselves, because this is about your well-being, and your goals, and your life.” She stopped there. They were all somber, of course. A few of them seemed actively engaged in some sort of internal catechism: Because Mom wants me to? Because Dad wants me to? Because it never occurred to any of us that I wouldn’t? Because I just want to get in, and I’ll worry about all this Deep Thoughts crap in my own damn time. “

Okay,” said Portia. “I’m sure you have questions. I’m here to help. Is there something you’d like to know about the university? Or about admissions?” 

It didn’t take long. This was why she’d come, after all, not the promotional film or the save-us-all-the-trouble lecture or the cute story about the kid who’d never talked to a professor. They wanted in. They wanted the tricks, the secrets, the strategies. They wanted to maximize and package. 

They wanted to know what they should write their essays about, and if a 720 on the math SAT was good enough, and was it better to take six APs and get some 4’s or three APs and get all 5’s?

 “Are the essays important?” said a girl with fearful eyes behind thick glass. “I mean, if you have good grades and good scores?” “At Princeton, the essays are very important. I think perhaps more so than at other colleges. You should think carefully about them, and spend time on them.” “But,” the girl said plaintively, “some people aren’t that good writers. I mean, some people are good at other things.” “Oh, we understand that,” Portia said. She nodded appreciatively at Roden, who was bringing her a chair. “We know that not everyone’s equally gifted as a writer. We’re not expecting every student to have the same fluency with language, and we know that people are intelligent in different ways. But as far as we’re concerned, you’ve had about seventeen years to write your application essays.” Predictably, the kids exchanged looks of horror.

“Oh, you’ve been busy. Part of those seventeen years was probably spent, I don’t know, spitting up and learning to ride a two-wheeler. You’ve been doing your homework and going to camp, or maybe working on your Facebook profile.” There was a ripple of sheepish acknowledgment through the room. “But the fact is, you’ve had time to think about how you want to use these brief opportunities on the application, and that’s how you should think of them: as opportunities. What are the most important things you need to tell us about yourself? How do you want to tell us those things? If you decide that you want to squander an essay declaring your undying devotion to the color blue, or your love for your childhood goldfish Fluffy, I’m going to wonder if you really have very much to say. 

On the other hand, there are so many things we want to know about you, and with the exception of your recommendations, this is just about the only way we’re going to find out. We want to know what makes you tick, what gets you out of bed in the morning. If you love to play sports, we want to know why. If your favorite subject is math, we want to know why. If you can’t stand biology, make a case for it. Tell us about it. We want to know about the people who have influenced you and the way you feel about our leaders and our national policies. We’re interested in your thoughts on religion and even popular culture. Basically, we’re interested in just about everything.” 

She turned to the fearful girl, who did not seem at all comforted. Portia sighed. “And as far as the writing itself, again, not everyone has a natural, flowing, literary style. We understand this. But on the other hand, with seventeen years to write your essays, you’ve certainly had enough time to make sure you’ve made proper use of grammar, and that every single word is spelled correctly. Not because mistakes will tell us you’re unintelligent. I freely admit that most of us in the adult world rely heavily on our computer spell-check programs! But a spelling or grammatical mistake in your application means that you haven’t cared enough to make sure there aren’t any mistakes. And that does mean something to us.” 

“You hear that?” Roden said. “Now you know why I’m always on your case about this.” “

It isn’t a timed exam, after all,” Portia said. “You know, you might make an error in the middle of an SAT essay. It’s not a disaster. Anyone can butcher the English language when the clock is ticking. But with your essays, you have time, so take the time to go over them. You might catch something, and be really glad you did.” 

"Any other dumb, avoidable mistakes?” Roden said. “Pay attention, everybody.” “Okay.” She smiled. “A few. Please don’t write us a long, rapturous essay about how much you want to attend Yale. You’d be surprised,” she said when they laughed. “It happens quite a lot. The cut-and-paste function on your computer makes it easy to declare undying love for any number of colleges simultaneously. Unfortunately, it also makes it easy to slip up.

Korelitz, Jean Hanff. Admission. Kindle Edition.

I do wish admission officers would say all this but they most often don’t. They have to try to encourage applications but in the quote Portia scares them, and in some cases for good reasons. This scene takes place at Deerfield and the rest of the scene is worth reading too.

So in answer to your question, don’t believe the vast majority of what you see/hear in the film. Read the book and you will likely end up knowing more accurate inside intel than if you went to an information session given by a real admission officer at Princeton. 

It is worth adding that both the book and film Admission focus on Princeton’s admission office. Princeton’s admission  office and admission practices are  not at all like what well over 90% of the colleges and university admission offices do in the US. Most of the over 4000 schools in the US   are easy to get into. They do not require essays, recommendations, and, in some cases, testing. Instead they require a transcript (and in many cases the ability to pay the fees). In other words, the film is very misleading if students outside the US assume that most admission offices use a committee to weigh exceptionally qualified students and to determine which small percentage of them get in. Most colleges take the vast majority of the students who apply. There is already enough stress about admission in the US and the world. The fact is that Admission is a word which applies to something that contains, to quote Walt Whitman, "multitudes".