Rating: 4
Recommended for: high school students, parents/family of high school students
Genre: education, nonfiction
"Our stress and drive to achieve is not our fault. From the time we're small, we're taught that college is competitive, important and waaaaaay expensive. If we let them, the financial and emotional pressures can easily overwhelm us."
Dr. Aviva Legatt is a former UPenn Wharton admissions officer who writes a powerful narrative on what it's like to apply to college, the emotional and social pressures to achieve results, and more. Her background as a student in a high-achieving high school and applying as one of the "lackluster" students in comparison to her peers also adds insight to how the pressures of the college process have no indication on how well you will succeed later on in life.
Legatt also offers exercises in each part of the book to help the reader expand what commonly is a narrow-minded view of their future. Too often are students' futures dictated by their parents, and the author certainly proves an effort to allow the student to widen their horizons. She further provides case scenarios of various successful individuals throughout the past few decades (i.e. NYT author Adam Grant, her personal clients) as evidence on how they transformed their applications into the best representation of themselves-- remaining authentic to themselves on paper.
Despite all these great points, what I liked best out of everything in her book was the few pages she dedicated in selecting the perfect college. Where many students prioritize prestige, she offers insight on other aspects of higher education that often remain overlooked by applicants such as a college's culture/character, their strategic goals for the upcoming years, how they structure their curriculum, and more. These parts of the application process are important, and Dr. Legatt highlights them here clearly.
