Any questions?
In a flash, those laid-back parents who had chosen Walden over Brearley, Walden over Dalton, Walden over Riverdale, and Walden over Collegiate transformed into obsessive, ruthless, competitive despots.
Won’t it hurt our kids that Walden doesn’t grade?
What about class rank? How was an admissions officer supposed to tell if a student was at the top of his or her class or the bottom?
Would transcripts indicate the difference between, say, an advanced seminar and a tie-dye-for-credit course?
Were the college counselors going to persuade certain kids not to apply to certain colleges? And if so, how did they plan to justify that?
“If my wife and I went to Harvard, does our daughter have an advantage there?”
（Just pure nastiness, for its own sake, this particular father being a well-known asshole.）
Fran, of course, had been here before, and “here” was getting worse with every passing year. She reiterated her points, reissued her Zen, and recommended that parents read a recently published book that she herself had been learning a great deal from: Colleges That Change Lives. “If you look beyond the name-brand schools there is so much out there! Even I didn’t know some of these places! The educational landscape is so varied and fascinating! I really look forward to meeting you, and working with your children!”
Johanna left with the others, spilling out onto Joralemon Street in a scrum of frantic people. Many of these mothers and fathers had been together since their children started pre-K; now, suddenly, they were at the opening bell of a steeplechase, and everyone knew far too much about everyone else. Tommy Belkow was a piano prodigy. Lizzie Wynn had spent the previous summer in China doing a language immersion, and her older sister was at Princeton. Julia Wu was straight-up brilliant, and she had already taken the SAT. Twice. Both of Carla Leavitt’s parents—as her father had just reminded over a hundred truly disgusted people—had attended Harvard.
“Poor you,” Nancy Farrell said, behind her. “You’ve got three!”
She said this as if it was news to Johanna.
“Maybe that’ll keep me from getting too stressed out about any one of them.”
“I’d be out of my mind. I still haven’t recovered from Daisy.”
Daisy was a sophomore at Brown, where Nancy herself had gone to college.
“I suppose Harrison’s going to want to apply to Yale or Harvard.”
Johanna had no idea whether Harrison was going to want to apply to Yale or Harvard. Even if he was already thinking about college—and he was the only one of the three who conceivably was—he was hardly confiding in her.
“Wherever he wants to apply is fine.”
That felt like a pretty strong statement to Johanna, but obviously not strong enough.
“Where did Salo go? Remind me.”
“Cornell.”
“Oh! Well, I bet Cornell would take them all.”
Johanna looked at her.
“Sammy says he doesn’t want to go to Brown but I told him he needs to apply. At least have the option.”
“I have to go,” Johanna said. She didn’t, and she was surprised to hear herself say it.
“Oh. Okay. Where you off to?”
“Bookstore.” Another surprise. “I have to get some books.”
Nancy laughed. “Well, that would be the place for it. Hey.” She leaned close to Johanna’s ear. “Carla Leavitt’s dad. What a tool.”
Johanna nodded.