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4.26 AVERAGE
4.26 AVERAGE
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
fast-paced
Brilliant, acerbic, and deeply affecting, The Golden Ticket is set in the shadow of Stanford University, where Irena Smith—Soviet émigré, PhD in comparative literature, obsessive reader, former Stanford admissions officer, and mother to three children—works as a private admissions counselor to some of the most accomplished, ambitious, and tightly wound students in the country and across the world.
In sometimes straightforward and sometimes oblique responses to college essay prompts (with flagrant disregard for word count restrictions), Irena lays bare the striving, the angst, and the absurdity surrounding highly selective—or, more accurately, highly rejective—college admissions, parenting in Palo Alto, and what we really mean when we say we want the best for our children. Evoking David Sedaris (if David Sedaris were a short, aggrieved, middle-aged woman with occasional delusions of grandeur and an encyclopedic knowledge of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, The Brady Bunch, and Gilligan's Island), this memoir pulls back the curtain on what happens when aspiration meets reality—and redefines what it means to succeed.
If you like dignified, earnest memoirs by people who have Accomplished Great Things, this is not a book for you. But if you're into snark, soul-searching, great and not-so-great literature, long, loopy tangents, extravagant overuse of parenthetical clauses, and surprisingly entertaining footnotes—well, then you're in the right place.
(And yes, okay, I wrote it, but trust me: it's really good.)
In sometimes straightforward and sometimes oblique responses to college essay prompts (with flagrant disregard for word count restrictions), Irena lays bare the striving, the angst, and the absurdity surrounding highly selective—or, more accurately, highly rejective—college admissions, parenting in Palo Alto, and what we really mean when we say we want the best for our children. Evoking David Sedaris (if David Sedaris were a short, aggrieved, middle-aged woman with occasional delusions of grandeur and an encyclopedic knowledge of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, The Brady Bunch, and Gilligan's Island), this memoir pulls back the curtain on what happens when aspiration meets reality—and redefines what it means to succeed.
If you like dignified, earnest memoirs by people who have Accomplished Great Things, this is not a book for you. But if you're into snark, soul-searching, great and not-so-great literature, long, loopy tangents, extravagant overuse of parenthetical clauses, and surprisingly entertaining footnotes—well, then you're in the right place.
(And yes, okay, I wrote it, but trust me: it's really good.)