Fat Envelope Frenzy

Joie Jager-Hyman

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061742859
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

A former Ivy League admissions officer, Joie Jager-Hyman follows five bright and eager high schoolers—students from diverse ethnic, social, and financial backgrounds—as they each put their best foot forward on the road they hope will lead them to the hallowed halls of Harvard University.

At once a remarkable true story of dedication, achievement, and heartbreak and a guide for success in an ultra-competitive environment, this important work deserves a place in the home of every family that has ever dreamed of receiving that coveted "fat envelope" in the mail. Jager-Hyman also offers a startlingly frank appraisal of the college admission process and the important roles race and class continue to play in a student's efforts to attend the best school possible.

• EIGHT •

“No rejections…yet:)”

MARLENE

If I can’t get in to Rochester, there’s no way I’m going to get into any of the Ivies,” Marlene says. “It’s basically all over for me.” She still hasn’t heard from the University of Rochester, even though three of her friends have already gotten in. I explain to her that it takes time to evaluate thousands of files and not all accepted students are notified so early. She’s already convinced that she must have been rejected anyway.

There is a communal sense of uneasiness and dread hidden behind the daily routine at New Rochelle High School. The seniors are like corporate executives in the midst of company downsizing. They yearn for relief from the torment of uncertainty but fear the sucker punch of bad news.

Today, Marlene must present a persuasive speech for her Speech and Communications class, and she has chosen the hot-button topic of affirmative action. Even with her topic selection, she is hesitant to wander into the minefield of race. “Getting race involved in my speech would be way too complicated,” she explains. “When a minority gets into a good school, everyone is respectful to their face, but when the person turns his or her back, it’s a completely different story. When this African American girl got into Cornell early, these two guys said congratulations, but that same day one of them was like, ‘She just got in because she’s black,’ and they both nodded.”

Marlene stands in front of her upper-middle-class peers to present her argument. Reading from her notes, she begins, “Admission to U.S. colleges favors rich kids. To break the cycle, underprivileged applicants deserve special consideration.” She points out the ways in which wealthy students are favored in the admissions process. She talks about the SAT, which gives an advantage to students who can afford test-prep ser vices, and how well-off athletes often receive more generous scholarships than low-income students. She displays a political cartoon of President Bush to introduce the topic of legacies. In it, the president has his arm around his father’s shoulder and argues against affirmative action by saying, “Why heck, some mediocre underachiever could have an unfair advantage because of race and circumstance, right, Dad?”

Not everyone finds the joke funny. When Marlene finishes her speech, she is confronted by one of her classmates, a legacy student who has been accepted early decision to the University of Pennsylvania. “I come from an upper-class family, and I never had a tutor for the SATs,” the girl says, pausing for a moment. “Well, I guess my parents tutored me.”

“That’s my point,” Marlene responds. “Low-income families have a completely different lifestyle. They can’t equally compete for the same spot at an Ivy League school. I have totally lost hope.”

MARLENE RUSHES HOME from school on March 18. She’s read on her trusty source, the College Confidential Web site, that Brandeis has just sent applicants their decision letters. She may have given up hope of getting into the Ivy League, but she hasn’t given up on Brandeis, her next favorite college.

Marlene’s pulse quickens as she approaches her front door. She stares at the row of mailboxes on the first floor of her apartment building like one of them may contain a bomb. “Let’s just get this over with,” she tells herself, as she jams her small bronze key into the metal lock and yanks it toward her.

Damn it. The mailman must be late today. He’s usually here by now.

Marlene figures that she might as well take a nap, but when she gets up to her fifth-floor apartment, she is too wound up to sleep. She flips on the TV and scrolls through the daytime programs. The next time she looks at the clock it is already 3:30 PM. She heads back downstairs to check again. As the elevator descends, her eyes fixate on the illuminated numbers of each passing floor. Four, three, two…the shiny doors part. Please, please just let this work out, she prays. She jerks the metallic mailbox door, which flings open like there’s a jack-in-the-box inside.

Still nothing.

Desperate for a reprieve from her restlessness, Marlene makes a second attempt at an after-school nap. She kicks off her shoes, crawls into bed, and concentrates on shutting down her hyperactive mind. Soon she is enveloped by a peaceful darkness. Everything is black.

The apartment is quiet when Marlene opens her eyes again. She reaches for her cell phone to check the clock. It’s 5 PM. She is suddenly convinced that the next time she opens the mailbox, she will find a letter from Brandeis. It is here, and there is nothing she can do to change that.

Bracing for the worst, Marlene heads back downstairs. In the elevator, she gives herself a mental pep talk. “If I don’t get in, it will be okay,” she tells herself. “I can always just go to Stony Brook.” As she walks toward the mailboxes. the muscles in her face tense up. She slowly turns the key and peers into the cubby like a post-op patient peeling off surgical bandages.

Inside the mailbox is a great big fat envelope addressed to Ms. Marlene Fernandez with a prominent “Congratulations” printed underneath. Yes! Thank God! Marlene takes a long, deep breath. This is the first serene moment she has had in months.

Marlene decides to wait until she gets back upstairs to open the letter. The package feels weighty and significant in her hands as she rides the elevator up to the fifth floor. Sitting on the living room couch, she carefully opens the envelope and pulls out a navy blue folder with the Brandeis University emblem splashed across the front. Inside, she finds her acceptance letter.

Dear Marlene:

CONGRATULATIONS! It is my pleasure to offer you admission to Brandeis University and the Class of 2011. The Committee on Admissions was truly impressed with your personal and academic accomplishments. In particular, we found you to be an ideal fit with our campus environment and we are confident that you will excel here during your undergraduate years. We look forward to having you join the Brandeis community….

Enclosed, you will find a host of information to help you begin your enrollment for the fall semester. To accept our offer of admission, we ask that you complete the Enrollment Form and return it, along with the non-refundable $500 University fee, in the envelope provided no later than May 1, 2007. You will also find information from the Office of Residence Life regarding your online housing form. Over the next few months you will receive additional information about Dining Ser vices, Orientation, and Residential Life. Please be sure to pay close attention to these mailings and complete all forms in a timely manner to ensure your smooth transition to campus….

Welcome to the Class of 2011!

Sincerely,
Gil J. Villanueva
Dean of Admissions

Marlene flips through the rest of the packet and discovers a letter from the Financial Aid Office. She wasn’t expecting to get any information about financial aid this early and takes it as a good sign. After skimming the short introductory paragraph, her eyes dart toward the middle of the page. They widen in amazement. “Can this be right?” she asks herself.

Brandeis is offering Marlene $38,200 in financial aid for next year. Just to make sure, she rereads the columns of numbers: $27,000 is coming from an Alumni and Friends Scholarship. The government is paying for $6,000 in grants. She also has $1,700 in Work Study and $3,500 in Federal Perkins Loans.*

Now Marlene is really excited. “It’s a really great package,” she tells me over the phone a short time later. “It will cost me $14,000 total, which isn’t bad at all.”

About an hour later, Marlene greets her mother and oldest sister at the door to tell them the great news. She finds her mother’s reaction underwhelming. “She said congratulations, but she basically has no idea what Brandeis is. I spent fifteen minutes trying to get her to pronounce the name,” jokes Marlene. She then calls her sister Yvonne and her father, who happens to be visiting the Dominican Republic. Everyone is impressed and excited that Marlene got such a large scholarship.

Marlene doesn’t realize until a few weeks later that Brandeis is asking her to take out more than the $3,500 in loans each year. Though they are giving her $38,200 in financial aid, the cost of tuition, room, board, and fees for the coming academic year is $47,150. Even with her Perkins Loan, she comes up almost $9,000 short, which means that she will have to take out another loan to cover the gap. If she goes to Brandeis, Marlene will be more than $50,000 in debt by the time she graduates.

NABIL

It’s Saturday morning, and Nabil is at cross-country practice as usual. But today is far from a normal day. The MIT admissions results will go online at noon, Eastern Standard Time, 11 AM in Memphis.

Nabil has arranged for his brother to call him on his cell phone when the time comes so that he can walk him through the process of accessing the MIT decision over the phone. Nabil also brought several tennis balls to practice today. He wants to break up his usual routine by juggling three balls while he runs. “That way, I will be able to say, ‘I found out that I got into MIT after juggling at practice,’” he explains.

Nabil is pumped to begin this morning’s six-mile run. As the clock starts, he puts one foot in front of the other and tosses the tennis balls in the air, jogging and juggling at the same time. The balls look like a roving solar system of fluorescent green planets orbiting around him as he runs. He couldn’t care less that his teammates are staring at him. He keeps up the jogging and juggling for three miles and then carries the tennis balls, two in one hand and one in the other, for the rest of the distance.

In the past few weeks, Nabil has been outdoing himself on the field, often beating teammates who have always been the stars. It feels different to be pushing the pace of the pack. The experience gets him thinking about making the transition from student to professor. He imagines what it would be like to go from hearing about all these great teachers to becoming a teacher himself, guiding bright pupils as they solve difficult problem sets. Toward the end of the practice, Nabil finds himself conjuring the image of a commercial with Lance Armstrong he once saw. He hears the cyclist’s voice pronouncing the ad’s slogan in his head: “Why do we work hard? For victory? For glory? Or is it to build a foundation so that we can be someone else’s?”

Nabil finishes his run ahead of schedule and decides to do his stretches in the back parking lot behind the school. He wants to be near his cell phone, which he positions on the roof of his car so he can keep his eye on it. He brings his right foot toward his lower back and holds the first stretch, pulling on his thigh muscle like a piece of taffy.

Keeping one eye on his cell phone, Nabil moves through the next steps of his post-workout routine. Why hasn’t his brother called yet? Almost on cue, the small screen lights up. He flips open the phone and presses the receiver to his ear.

“Go to the MIT Web site,” Nabil tells his brother. He walks him through the process of logging in, making the directions as clear as possible to avoid any missteps that might prolong the wait time. It takes only a few minutes. His brother enters the password and clicks on the submit button.

The next thing Nabil hears is an earsplitting scream. “You’re in. You’re in,” his brother shrieks. In the background, his other siblings cheer and yell “Congratulations!” into the phone.

Nabil does not know what to do. “Okay, I got into college,” he thinks. “Now what?” As he drives home from practice, Nabil has the strangest feeling—he feels perfectly normal.

By the time he gets to his house, Nabil’s parents have already told their friends and family in Boston, Philadelphia, Texas, and Ethiopia, where one of his uncles even recognizes MIT as “a good school where scientists are trained.” The communal excitement amplifies Nabil’s gratification.

“Everything suddenly seems more realistic now,” he says. “I got into MIT.”

VERY FEW STUDENTS at Cordova High School even bother to apply to a college as selective as MIT. On Monday, Nabil shocks some of his teachers when he tells them that he got accepted. Of course, others gush that they knew he could do it, especially his cross-country coach, who assures Nabil that his recommendations “wrote themselves.” He hesitates to tell only one person, his English teacher, who recently gave him two detentions for tardiness and seems particularly disappointed that he is not doing his best. “I know she’ll be very happy for me, but it will make her expect more of me, so I’m going to wait to tell her,” he explains.

After getting into MIT, Nabil can’t help but feel like school is over, even though it is only March. Each day drags out. He feels even more distant from his classmates. “Doing the math thing pretty much separates me from everyone else at school,” he says. “I’m usually the only one from my school to qualify for the math competitions. Eventually, it just adds up and I feel alone.”

Nabil is constantly reminiscing about all the fun he had at the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament and imagining what it will be like to be a student in Cambridge. “I think being around people like me is what’s most important,” he says of the community. He keeps noticing little things that he loves, like an online picture of an MIT campus street sign that says NERD X-ING and when the hosts of NPR’s Car Talk joke around about the fact that they went to MIT.

Nabil has a week and a half to savor his MIT acceptance before he hears from the other colleges. “My attitude now is ‘Forget Princeton, Chicago, and Carnegie Mellon. The question is do I want to go to Harvard or MIT?’” he says. “Even though I thought Harvard was my first choice for a long time, I’m leaning toward MIT. My dad thinks MIT would be a better fit, too.”

To hear Nabil tell it, MIT students seem to have more fun doing things they enjoy, while Harvard students can be rich elitists. Still, he understands that his pro-MIT bias may be influenced by the fact that he has spent more time there. Before making any final decisions, Nabil plans to visit both schools in April, when the campuses will host fun-filled weekends designed to entice admitted students. “I expect to get into Harvard but I almost wish I’m wrong so my decision will be that much easier,” he says.

MARLENE

Marlene was not expecting anything significant in the mail. But the day after she got into Brandeis, she received another fat envelope, this one from the University of Rochester. S...