Getting In

"A savvy insider's take on a high-stakes, cutthroat campaign--except it's not about getting into the White House, but about getting into the perfect college. Stabiner's sharp, witty tale is as essential as a good SAT prep course--but a hell of a lot more fun."
--Arianna Huffington

"Getting In takes an edgy, knowing look inside the lives and minds of love-crazed parents--galvanized equally by desperation and devotion--as they try with all their might to thrust their cherished children into the universities of their dreams."
--Carolyn See, Making a Literary Life

"Karen Stabiner has clearly been through the crazy circus that is college admissions, and lucky for the rest of us she took pitch-perfect notes. You will come away from her book reassured that all the other families of applicants are even loonier than yours--or reassured that you fit right in. What do you mean, this is fiction?"
--Lisa Belkin, New York Times parenting writer (and hardy survivor of her son's college application process)

Q: What does a parent need to survive the college application process?

A. A sense of humor.
B. A therapist on 24-hour call.
C. A large bank balance.
D. All of the above.

Getting In is the roller-coaster story of five very different Los Angeles families united by a single obsession: acceptance at a top college, preferably one that makes their friends and neighbors green with envy. At an elite private school and a nearby public school, families devote themselves to getting their seniors into the perfect school--even if the odds are stacked against them, even if they can't afford the $50,000 annual price tag, even if the effort requires a level of deceit, and even if the object of all this attention wants to go somewhere else.

Getting In is a delightfully smart comedy of class and entitlement, of love and ambition, set in a world where a fat envelope from a top school matters more than anything . . . almost.