Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Delacorte Press (2020), 354 pages
Description
"An affluent teen who thinks she is headed off to the college of her dreams, must reckon with the truth and possibly her own guilt when her mother is arrested in a college admissions bribery scandal"--
User reviews
LibraryThing member Hccpsk
Julie Buxbaum (Tell Me Three Things) tackles the inevitable topic of the college admission scandal in her newest YA novel, Admission. Chloe Berringer lives in LA with her perfect B-list actress mother, father and sister, Isla. Chloe is desperately trying to navigate the admission process that seems
I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley.
Show More
to be coming much easier to her friends--including her bestie, Shola. Teen readers will definitely empathize with Chloe’s struggles (SATs, college essay, etc.) and her desperation to get into a “good” school. Told in a flash back-and-forth format (Now and Then), we slowly learn what happened as Chloe and her family live through not only the public embarrassment but the legal ramifications. Buxbaum’s telling an important story about wealth, privilege and responsibility that comes across a bit clunky and forced, but will resonate well with the target audience.I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley.
Show Less
LibraryThing member whitreidtan
Applying to college is stressful. It's stressful for students but it's also stressful for parents. I've been through it not only for myself, but also three times now as a parent. And I think it may be harder as a parent. Of course every school is going to want your amazing child, right? Well, no.
Chloe Berringer has a pretty great life. She's the daughter of privilege. She goes to an elite private school. Her mother is Joy Fields, a B-list actress. She doesn't totally fit in at school but she has a fabulous best friend, Shola, who is closer to her than her own sister. She's just been accepted at her dream college, the school she never thought she'd get into in a million years. And the guy friend she's been crushing on forever might just be showing signs of finally being interested. Sure, she isn't a high achiever or have a driving passion or know where she wants to be in five years or what she wants to be when she grows up. But those are minor and her life, on the whole, is truly pretty great. But that whole life changes early one morning when she opens the door to the FBI who are there to arrest her mother for her role in a college admissions scandal.
Chapters alternate between "Now" and "Then," or the door opening and moving forward from that moment versus the school year leading up to the fateful door opening. Both pieces are told in the first person by Chloe allowing the reader to see both her struggles with the admissions process itself and how her parents involvement in the scandal makes her feel about herself. Chloe isn't a stellar student but she's decent. Her standardized test scores are not good and no amount of tutoring has helped her. Her first attempt at a personal essay is dismal. Her friends appear to be sailing through the college admissions process while she hits every hurdle an otherwise wealthy, white girl can hit. The stress, anxiety, and fear accompanying the whole process is incredibly true to reality and made me sad to read about (thank heavens I'm done getting kids through this). The process stress, anxiety, and fear are nothing to the stress, anxiety, and shame that she feels once the scam becomes public though and she has to do some hard thinking about her own culpability and wonder if she practiced willful blindness and therefore deserves some of the public scorn and vitriol directed her way. It gets even harder as she examines the whole situation from the perspective of her best friend. Although they are incredibly close, Shola serves as a foil to Chloe in many ways. She is an outstanding student, black, and a scholarship student at their school. Her family does not have the financial means to fund even the additional legal "leg-ups" that everyone else at the school uses as a matter of course but Chloe still envies Shola without understanding all of the privilege she, Chloe, takes for granted.
As a character, Chloe is complex and contradictory. She is a typical teenager, entitled and a bundle of nerves, a compassionate kid and a whiny, thoughtless brat. Sometimes she can be all of these within the space of a few sentences. The reader alternates between sympathizing with her and thinking, "really? You didn't stop to question any of the odd or off or truly questionable things you were being asked to do?" The way that Buxbaum shows the daily deceptions in this Hollywood family, the importance of appearances, and the way that this has seeped into not only Chloe's character make-up but is also present in the people surrounding her in life, school, and beyond, is quite illustrative. As this premise is clearly pulled from current events, it would be impossible not to see the similarities with the real life college admissions scandal. Mom Joy and the situation itself are large parts Lori Loughlin mixed with small bits of Felicity Huffman but Chloe is her own person, grappling with everything in ways that none of the actual kids seem to have done, at least not in public. Some of what Chloe learns or acknowledges is a little heavy handed at times, although perhaps the obviousness of certain lessons are to reinforce the whole oblivious teenager thing. As for the secondary characters, Chloe tells the reader about their fabulousness and compares herself to them but they are clearly meant just to show aspects of Chloe's personality rather than to be fully fleshed out characters on their own. I do have one rather specialized nit pick as well but most people are never going to notice it.As the mom of a pole vaulter, the terminology and the look of the sport is all wrong. Again, you could suggest that since Chloe isn't actually a pole vaulter and she's the one narrating, she'd likely get it wrong but I think that's a stretch since she's seeing a picture of herself as still saying she's "spear in hand." And having spent years trying to get good pictures of my kid pole vaulting, the picture as described cannot exist, even if someone was fantastic at photoshop. But as I said, no one else is going to notice that but we very few. It's a clumsy error though and did jerk me out of the story. There were some clunky bits and a little too much didacticism, but over all, this was an interesting exercise in looking at privilege, entitlement, expectations, and hard learned lessons. If you want to think some more about the college admissions scandal, give this novel a try.
Show More
And it is incredibly painful to see a college tell your child that they regret...blah, blah, blah. (I still make spitting noises whenever the name of one particular institution is mentioned even though the kid in question is long since over the hurt of the denial.) So those of us privileged enough to have the time and money to do so try to do whatever we can to help our child look attractive to the college of their choice. We harangue them about their grades. We drive them to and from countless extracurricular activities. We lecture them on their social media presence. We take them on college visits. We hire tutors or outside college counselors. We enroll them in SAT/ACT prep classes. It's a lot. But we want them to have their choice of colleges. So I suppose that it isn't really surprising to find out that some parents crossed a legal line to make sure their children got into the college of their choice, as we all saw during the 2019 college admissions scandal. We watched as the highest profile parents pled guilty, lost professional opportunities, were pilloried in the press and public opinion, and ultimately served time. But did we ever wonder at the effect on the children at the base of the scandal beyond wondering how much they knew? Although the parents were ostensibly acting in their interests, the impact on the kids and their lives has been largely ignored. This unexplored angle is what Julie Buxbaum has created in her ripped from the headlines novel, Admission.Chloe Berringer has a pretty great life. She's the daughter of privilege. She goes to an elite private school. Her mother is Joy Fields, a B-list actress. She doesn't totally fit in at school but she has a fabulous best friend, Shola, who is closer to her than her own sister. She's just been accepted at her dream college, the school she never thought she'd get into in a million years. And the guy friend she's been crushing on forever might just be showing signs of finally being interested. Sure, she isn't a high achiever or have a driving passion or know where she wants to be in five years or what she wants to be when she grows up. But those are minor and her life, on the whole, is truly pretty great. But that whole life changes early one morning when she opens the door to the FBI who are there to arrest her mother for her role in a college admissions scandal.
Chapters alternate between "Now" and "Then," or the door opening and moving forward from that moment versus the school year leading up to the fateful door opening. Both pieces are told in the first person by Chloe allowing the reader to see both her struggles with the admissions process itself and how her parents involvement in the scandal makes her feel about herself. Chloe isn't a stellar student but she's decent. Her standardized test scores are not good and no amount of tutoring has helped her. Her first attempt at a personal essay is dismal. Her friends appear to be sailing through the college admissions process while she hits every hurdle an otherwise wealthy, white girl can hit. The stress, anxiety, and fear accompanying the whole process is incredibly true to reality and made me sad to read about (thank heavens I'm done getting kids through this). The process stress, anxiety, and fear are nothing to the stress, anxiety, and shame that she feels once the scam becomes public though and she has to do some hard thinking about her own culpability and wonder if she practiced willful blindness and therefore deserves some of the public scorn and vitriol directed her way. It gets even harder as she examines the whole situation from the perspective of her best friend. Although they are incredibly close, Shola serves as a foil to Chloe in many ways. She is an outstanding student, black, and a scholarship student at their school. Her family does not have the financial means to fund even the additional legal "leg-ups" that everyone else at the school uses as a matter of course but Chloe still envies Shola without understanding all of the privilege she, Chloe, takes for granted.
As a character, Chloe is complex and contradictory. She is a typical teenager, entitled and a bundle of nerves, a compassionate kid and a whiny, thoughtless brat. Sometimes she can be all of these within the space of a few sentences. The reader alternates between sympathizing with her and thinking, "really? You didn't stop to question any of the odd or off or truly questionable things you were being asked to do?" The way that Buxbaum shows the daily deceptions in this Hollywood family, the importance of appearances, and the way that this has seeped into not only Chloe's character make-up but is also present in the people surrounding her in life, school, and beyond, is quite illustrative. As this premise is clearly pulled from current events, it would be impossible not to see the similarities with the real life college admissions scandal. Mom Joy and the situation itself are large parts Lori Loughlin mixed with small bits of Felicity Huffman but Chloe is her own person, grappling with everything in ways that none of the actual kids seem to have done, at least not in public. Some of what Chloe learns or acknowledges is a little heavy handed at times, although perhaps the obviousness of certain lessons are to reinforce the whole oblivious teenager thing. As for the secondary characters, Chloe tells the reader about their fabulousness and compares herself to them but they are clearly meant just to show aspects of Chloe's personality rather than to be fully fleshed out characters on their own. I do have one rather specialized nit pick as well but most people are never going to notice it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member JRlibrary
CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!
A fictional story ripped straight from newspaper reports of the college admissions scandal. While the author claims it is all fiction and that she didn’t do much research, she was fascinated by news reports of the scandal and read everything. That info although slightly
I quite enjoyed the timeline being broken into then and now. Since I’d heard little of the real scandal and didn’t follow the case much, I found this book very interesting. I also enjoyed how Buxbaum gradually has Chloe piecing together what is happening with little odd occurrences that don’t seem right but that she manages to ignore until one big compelling file folder of evidence means she can’t ignore the facts any longer. I also liked the believable separation between Chloe and her best friend. I don’t think I’d have forgiven her either.
A fictional story ripped straight from newspaper reports of the college admissions scandal. While the author claims it is all fiction and that she didn’t do much research, she was fascinated by news reports of the scandal and read everything. That info although slightly
Show More
altered made its way into her story for certain. I quite enjoyed the timeline being broken into then and now. Since I’d heard little of the real scandal and didn’t follow the case much, I found this book very interesting. I also enjoyed how Buxbaum gradually has Chloe piecing together what is happening with little odd occurrences that don’t seem right but that she manages to ignore until one big compelling file folder of evidence means she can’t ignore the facts any longer. I also liked the believable separation between Chloe and her best friend. I don’t think I’d have forgiven her either.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Jynell
What lengths would you go to to get your kid into the right college?
I have not stayed on top of the college admission scandal, but reading this really peeked my interest in it. I felt for
the kids who were unaware and truly affected.
Julie Buxbaum did an excellent job of character development and
Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to read this and give my honest opinion.
I have not stayed on top of the college admission scandal, but reading this really peeked my interest in it. I felt for
the kids who were unaware and truly affected.
Julie Buxbaum did an excellent job of character development and
Show More
by the end of the book, I was completely invested in their lives.Thank you Netgalley for allowing me to read this and give my honest opinion.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Dairyqueen84
I loved Buxbaum's Tell Me Three Things and forgot the high school setting was the same. I liked this much more than I thought I would. I'm not a ripped-from-the-headlines kind of reader. Buxbaum wrote this timely tale with all the empathy, candor, and humor I would expect. Chloe Berringer and her
Show More
B-list actress mom, Joy Fields, are caught up in the college admissions scandal. Chloe, while shallow and sometimes vapid, makes for a surprisingly sympathetic protagonist. The teen dialogue is authentic and the character development is effortless, mostly developing from the action in the novel. Some things didn't quite work for me such as Chloe's friendship with Shola, who is Black and a tuition student at the private Wood Valley High School. She seemed too silly to be such good friends with a serious student like Shola. There's an author's note at the end of the book that claims "This book is 100 percent a work of fiction," which may be true for the main characters. When Chloe is talking about a part her mother never got in a romantic comedy, she doesn't name the actress who got the part but she clearly describes Felicity Huffman, who in real life was involved in the admissions scandal! So I guess it is 99 percent a work of fiction. Show Less
LibraryThing member managedbybooks
This is a story following a fictional version of the real life college admissions scandal that took place recently. It was really interesting to see everything unpacked and to also see what the author predicted for a conclusion to a case that only just closed in the last month or two. This was a
Show More
fascinating peek into the white privilege that dominates academia and the lengths people will go to in order to ensure the outcomes they want. Show Less
LibraryThing member SimplyKelina
Not bad for Young Adult; College Admission scandal put to life
LibraryThing member Kiaya40
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Children's/Delacorte Press Publishing for letting me read and review this intriguing story.
This was a first for me by this author, Julie Buxbaum, and she was great. This was pretty well written and pulled from the headlines with the recent ongoing college
It was a different and unique story using that scandal in the news as inspiration about what it might have been like for those involved in the real-life scandal or what it could be like for those involved in that type of scandal. It talks about and addresses the difference between the rich and the average or poor and how they might react and handle this kind of scandal differently. There were a lot of different issues mentioned and addressed with this story between the MC, Chloe, and her best friend, Shola, and the differences in their lifestyles, access to things, white/rich privilege, and race especially between the two best friends.
There were a lot of things that I hadn't thought about as far as everything this could entail in a person's life if they were involved in this kind of scandal and how it might affect them as an individual, their family, their friends. It was very intriguing and interesting to look at things from a different perspective of what might have or could have been for the daughter of the mother who bribed someone for the daughter to get into college much like what happened in the news recently.
There is a lot examined and shown from different points of view with the characters in the family with how they might feel especially how the daughter might feel finding out her parents had bought her way into college. How this kind of thing could affect the family, their relationships with each other and their friends/boyfriends, and so forth.
It was a lot to cover and it was covered well and caused me to stop and think what would I have done if I was the mother - would there be anything that would make me want to buy my child's way into college, which I can't think of anything that would make me want to buy my child's way in, how would I feel if my parents had bought my way into college - thankfully they didn't because that would have been very hard to take or deal with had my parents done something like that when I was applying to college in the past.
Anyway, I digress, suffice it to say this is a thought-provoking and well-written story that causes you to reflect, think, and consider how you might feel or what you might do or what you might have done. How it would be different for the rich compared to the rest of us to even be able to consider let alone do something like this and how someone might have to reflect and decide on their feelings with if they were being complicit in the situation and where their moral compass was at in regards to this kind of situation as well.
If you've been intrigued by this college admissions scandal that was recently in the news, or like this author, or anything, this is a book not to be missed. It's cerebral and a bit deeper than you might think after getting into it but it's very interesting to read and think about what could have or might have happened the way she spins it with her characters experiencing the scandal in this story.
This was a first for me by this author, Julie Buxbaum, and she was great. This was pretty well written and pulled from the headlines with the recent ongoing college
Show More
admissions scandal that was in the news. It was a different and unique story using that scandal in the news as inspiration about what it might have been like for those involved in the real-life scandal or what it could be like for those involved in that type of scandal. It talks about and addresses the difference between the rich and the average or poor and how they might react and handle this kind of scandal differently. There were a lot of different issues mentioned and addressed with this story between the MC, Chloe, and her best friend, Shola, and the differences in their lifestyles, access to things, white/rich privilege, and race especially between the two best friends.
There were a lot of things that I hadn't thought about as far as everything this could entail in a person's life if they were involved in this kind of scandal and how it might affect them as an individual, their family, their friends. It was very intriguing and interesting to look at things from a different perspective of what might have or could have been for the daughter of the mother who bribed someone for the daughter to get into college much like what happened in the news recently.
There is a lot examined and shown from different points of view with the characters in the family with how they might feel especially how the daughter might feel finding out her parents had bought her way into college. How this kind of thing could affect the family, their relationships with each other and their friends/boyfriends, and so forth.
It was a lot to cover and it was covered well and caused me to stop and think what would I have done if I was the mother - would there be anything that would make me want to buy my child's way into college, which I can't think of anything that would make me want to buy my child's way in, how would I feel if my parents had bought my way into college - thankfully they didn't because that would have been very hard to take or deal with had my parents done something like that when I was applying to college in the past.
Anyway, I digress, suffice it to say this is a thought-provoking and well-written story that causes you to reflect, think, and consider how you might feel or what you might do or what you might have done. How it would be different for the rich compared to the rest of us to even be able to consider let alone do something like this and how someone might have to reflect and decide on their feelings with if they were being complicit in the situation and where their moral compass was at in regards to this kind of situation as well.
If you've been intrigued by this college admissions scandal that was recently in the news, or like this author, or anything, this is a book not to be missed. It's cerebral and a bit deeper than you might think after getting into it but it's very interesting to read and think about what could have or might have happened the way she spins it with her characters experiencing the scandal in this story.
Show Less
Awards
Language
Original publication date
2020-12-01