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Pennsylvania Democratic politics and the failure of the Clinton health plan
     and the various repellent aspects of Karl Rove and the Blair scandal at
The New York Times
. They talked about the professor’s daughters’ obsession with Harry Potter and the twins’ remembered literary obsessions from
     their own childhood, and they spent a good long while going over the paper the professor was readying for the AHA in two weeks,
     about the amateur photographs taken by British troops in the Boer War. And then finally,
finally,
the professor had looked at his watch, seen that it was nearly three o’clock, and announced that he had to go and pick up
     his children at school. Whereupon the twins burst into hysterical laughter, and Patrick turned to his brother and said, “See?
     I told you. I
told
you.”
    They had had a bet, the Princeton brother reported, when the two had at last stopped high-fiving each other. “Peter said I
     was always jerking him around when I talked about conversations I’d had with my professors. He said he never got past the
     TA in any of his classes, and he’d never be able to just knock on a professor’s door and sit down and have a conversation.
     I said I did it all the time, so he bet me. Five hours! I have to say, you surpassed even my expectations. But don’t worry.”
     Patrick laughed. “I’ll donate my winnings to charity.”
    “You ought to donate your winnings to
me,
” said the history professor, but he wasn’t really angry. In fact, there was definite pride in his face as he told this story,
     and Portia had happily purloined the tale.
    “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