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middle-class existence; shifting industries made it impossible to land even some blue-collar gigs without the advanced diploma. Add to that the fetishization of certain schools and the institution of the Common Application, the online form that students could submit to a hundred colleges simply by giving each a credit-card number, and you had a mad scramble for a handful of trophy campuses, a blood race buffeted by corporate hangers-on, some of them standardized testing toughs and some of them media companies producing annual publications ranking schools from one to fifty on dubious metrics pulled together from SAT scores, graduates’ tax returns, and the occasional interview with a hungover senior. And to hear of it, there seemed nothing but the darkness of outer space for everyone who fell short of the bar. In graduate school, Anne had been appalled by the teaching jobs awaiting the brightest doctorates she knew, who left Chicago for dusty towns where the state university campus had a tenure-track spot open up, and who hoped to publish enough in six years to transfer back to a city with a Starbucks. All of these brilliant young adults were installed in everyday colleges. If you just knew where to look, she thought, if a student knew what to ask for, she could have an extraordinary experience at any college in the country. But these schools Anne might have mentioned—as one father said, “Please, nothing I’ve never heard of, okay?”
    The fathers often had very little idea how things had changed. Often the mothers hired her in part to impress upon them the dire nature of the college circumstance. But fathers were uneasy about Anne. She did not blame them. They made money, and she wanted some of their money, to do what? Nothing they hadn’t already paid a zillion dollars for their fancy private school to do. Hiring Anne smacked of excess, of mommy zealotry, of spit-shining and list making and competing with all the other assholes out there on the freezing sidelines of the homecoming game. She had to work to disarm them. It was on occasion even harder than disarming their teenage children.
    â€œYou went to Princeton, is that right?” asked Gideon Blanchard.
    â€œYes, that’s right.”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œAnd then graduate school at the University of Chicago.”
    Here he sidestepped the obvious question. He seemed, in fact, not to see it at all, so instead of asking what the hell went wrong, he inquired, “So, tell me: why is it acceptable for me to hire a professional to write my daughter’s college essays?”
    Anne got the “hire a professional” question fairly regularly—a last gasp of liberal guilt as they pulled out the checkbook: “Why is it fair for me to hire you to help my child?” Once Anne had given a long and gentle explanation that she was the logical extension of an education that began with private preschool and intended to position the child for the greatest success. Now she just smiled a little and said, “It’s not fair.”
    But write the essays ? “I don’t write the essays,” she told him.
    He raised his eyebrows and shifted his jaw from one side to the other. “No?”
    The first response that came into Anne’s mind— Would it be okay with you if I did? —seemed rude. She was quiet for a moment, trying to think how to help him save face, although the man hadn’t blanched a bit. She tried reason. “Do you think admissions officers can’t tell the difference between my writing and that of someone a decade younger than I am?” she asked. “It wouldn’t help if I wrote the essays. In fact, it would probably ensure the student’s rejection.”
    Now he was with her. The ethical question had been a feint; Gideon Blanchard was a pragmatist.
    â€œNo. I just help with the process.”
    â€œAnd how do you do that?”
    Anne leaned forward over her clasped