Former “Reader” for Princeton U. Speaks at Skeptics

Jean Hanff Korelitz, author of Admission, was the featured Society of Skeptic speaker on February 23. Korelitz drew upon her personal experience as an outside reader of admission applications at Princeton University to write Admission.

According to The New Yorker, “The book centers around Portia Nathan, a 38-year-old admission officer at Princeton University, a place so discriminating that it can afford to turn down applicants who are ‘excellent in all of the ordinary ways’ in favor of the utterly extraordinary – ‘Olympic athletes, authors of legitimately published books, Siemens prize winners, working film or Broadway actors, International Tchaikovsky Competition violinists.’ Portia compares her job to ‘building a better fruit basket’ and achieves career success by helping her institution pluck the most exotic specimens, but her personal life is permanently on hold because of a traumatic incident from her own college years that she has never come to terms with. Although the reader may unravel the mystery of Portia’s past before the plot does, the novel gleams with acute insights into what most consider a deeply mysterious process.”

Updated 2/24/2010

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