”There was more shaping to this book than we generally do,”
said Asya Muchnick, senior editor at Little, Brown. — Boston
Globe
Viswanathan is the 19-year-old who got a $500,000 book
contract and a DreamWorks movie deal, and has since admitted
appropriating numerous passages from another writer’s teen angst
novels for her own, “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a
Life.” — Washington Post
September 4, 2003, 10:03 a.m.
Dear Kaavya,
This is Katherine over at IvyWise. I’m looking forward to working with you to
make sure you can get into Harvard. I thought that your first
sentence on your application was great. Remember, do not write more
than one sentence at a time without passing it along to us so we
can make sure it projects the right sense of who you are based on
the automated personality inventory you took on our website. Please
see to it that you give me a call when you finish going over this
with your parents, so we can go forward.
Why do you want to go to Harvard?
I want to go to Harvard because I feel that Harvard’s
writing program is very strong, as well as its overall
curriculum.
This is a great start! But let’s see what we can do to make your
first sentence really stand out. Also, personal conflict really
gets these admissions officers excited. Let’s see what we can
add:
As I have come to understand Harvard’s mission, I’ve also
come to understand myself. My identity is split down the center,
caught as I am along an ethnic divide; Am I an Indian or an
American? For me, dealing with the stereotypes of what it is to be
an Indian have helped me develop a sense of social justice, to know
what I can do to change people’s prejudices.
Let me know what you think!
—Katherine
September 4, 2003, 11:00 a.m.
Kaavya,
Katherine told me that you were showing resistance about
changing your first sentence. For goodness sake, we did not raise
you to go to Brown where you could just float around and not do
anything. If Katherine tells you to change something, change it, I
don’t care what you think about it.
—Daddy
September 4, 2003, 11:30 a.m.
Dear Kaavya,
Don’t worry about it. Let’s just focus on getting you into
Harvard! I think your next sentence actually works very well and
there’s very little I would change.
I’ve learned not to be a victim, not to blame everything on
a domineering, chauvinist father; how can he help what he has been
raised to believe?
Maybe we should put this in a greater context though, so we
aren’t simply focusing on your father, but on society at large.
Here’s what we’ll do:
I’ve learned not to be a victim, not to blame everything on
an oppressive culture that expects little of its women. Instead, I
take that as a challenge to transcend those expectations. This is
why I’m not worried about the presence of Larry Summers or
Harvey Mansfield at the school.
—Katherine
September 4, 2003, 11:31 a.m.
Kaavya,
Katherine told me that your second sentence was very good. You
know we love you no matter what.
—Daddy
September 4, 2003, 2:00 p.m.
Dear Kaavya,
We’re running into a problem with this next part, which should
show some intellectual depth.
Strange as it may sound, I grew up reading classic poets
such as Matthew Arnold, Yeats, and of course Shakespeare. In junior
year, I wrote a play similar to Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz
& Guildenstern Are Dead, except from the perspective of
Desdemona in Othello, a character with whom I’ve always felt a
close affinity.
First, you wrote two sentences! Slow down, one at a
time! Please don’t jump ahead, we need to take baby steps in
culling out the real you. Now, look, everybody reads
Shakespeare, and not everybody knows who Tom Stoppard is. You’re
applying to Harvard, not Tisch. You should be more quirky in this
essay. Talk about teenage authors and how they have influenced
you.
Strange as it may sound, I’ve always felt a strong
connection to American authors who appeal to white American
teenagers. Their carefree accounts of the youthful struggle to
overcome peer pressure and fit in seem so alien to me, considering
that I’ve grown up in a number of different places and have taken
to ignoring social pressures in the course of pursuing my own
dream: becoming a more culturally-sensitive teen romance
author.
Send me that script for the play. Maybe we can do something with
it.
—Katherine
September 13, 2003, 1:30 a.m.
Dear Kaavya,
I’m glad you agree about making sure that your name is spelled
in the original Hindi on the application. It makes you look more
exotic. Besides, it’s not like Harvard could access India’s birth
certificates (do they even have those? Ha ha).
Now that the application is all set and done, except for the
recommendation letter from Professor Goodwin, let’s get to work on
that creative writing assignment you have coming up…
—Katherine
December 4, 2003, 2:00 p.m.
Dear Kaavya,
The Admissions Committee regrets to inform you that it cannot
offer you a place in Brown University’s Class of 2008…
J. Peter Freire is a writer living in Washington, D.C.
He blogs regularly at TheIndividualist.net.
