30. Tiffin Talks Likelies/Targets/Reaches II
By the first week of April, most colleges have released their decisions—and since we’re a college “prep”aratory school, we all pay close attention to the future of the sixth-form.
Royce Stringfellow is rejected from Carnegie Mellon, accepted at Johns Hopkins, and accepted at MIT. We all assume he’ll choose MIT—but nope, Royce is Baltimore-bound. He wants to be a Blue Jay.
Willow Levy gets into Denison, Bates, and Loyola (MD).
She chooses Loyola, which is also in Baltimore, and we wonder if that’s why Royce chose Hopkins?
He insists that’s not the reason. The biomedical engineering program is slightly better at Hopkins, he says, and he wants to announce the play-by-play at the Hopkins lacrosse games.
But it’s cute, we think, that Willow will be just down the street.
Madison J. gets rejected from Brown and Yale, but (huge sigh of relief) is accepted at Cornell. We hear her crying tears of joy over the phone with her mom. Her dream of the Ivy League has come true.
We all watch Davi’s TikToks as she chronicles her acceptances and rejections: She’s accepted at Tulane, rejected from UNC, accepted at the College of Charleston and the University of Richmond, rejected from Texas and USC (CA).
She reacts with equanimity to each letter, and we know that’s because she only cares about the University of Miami.
Rumor has it Miami’s letters are being released on April 2—but the day comes and goes, and there’s no post from Davi. We assume this means Miami has rejected her, which spooks the underclassmen. The Sink is very crowded that night. Getting into college is hard!
But then, on the morning of April 3, a video appears. Davi has filmed herself wearing a green-and-orange Miami T-shirt. She takes a dramatic breath before opening the email.
Her eyes scan the screen, and then she jumps from her chair. She got in! She got in! She is going to Miami!
It’s all thanks to Tiffin, she says. Tiffin changed her life. She thanks her college counselor, Mr. Maverick, she thanks her best friend, Charley, for encouraging her to study, she thanks her boyfriend, Liam Donovan, for his emotional support. (Wow—hard launch.)
She is going to be a ’Cane!
Olivia H-T has kept her college search private, so nobody knows that Miami is also Olivia’s first choice.
On April 2, the decision arrives… but Olivia is too nervous to open the email.
She waits through the entire school day, then through dinner, Intervis, and study hall.
She wants to know if Davi got in—she realizes this is fully a “follower” mindset—but there’s been no news and no video.
Olivia texts Tilly in Connecticut. Did you get into SMU?
Tilly writes back: Ofc, yes. I’m going to pledge Kappa.
Of course, yes. As if there were ever a question. Tilly Benbow can conduct a yearlong affair with another student’s stepfather, leave school in the middle of the year, and still get precisely what she wants.
Olivia tries to channel some of Tilly’s casual confidence. Just before lights out, she opens the email.
Sorry to inform you… nearly sixty thousand applications… wish you the best of luck in your…
Rejected, Olivia thinks. Of course, because she’s a follower and Miami wants leaders.
The next day, when Olivia learns that Davi has been accepted to Miami, she sheds a few self-pitying tears. Comparisons are odious, but it’s hard to deny that UMiami wanted Davi more than they wanted Olivia.
Olivia receives an email from High Point, which is the only other school she applied to, even though Mav encouraged her to add TCU and Ole Miss to her list. Why didn’t she do that?
TCU is all over TikTok, and Ole Miss has the best tailgating scene in the country.
Olivia was so blind, so blissfully ignorant, she had no clue Mav thought so little of her. Follower.
She’s terrified to open the email from High Point, because what if they’ve rejected her too?
What will she do? Take a gap year, funded by her parents, she supposes.
She could travel—or move back home and volunteer somewhere.
The Pine Street Inn, maybe? Just thinking about this reminds Olivia that there are people in the world with far greater problems than not getting into college.
She opens the email.
Congratulations! You have been admitted…
Oh thank god, thank god! Olivia is so relieved, she nearly kisses the screen of her laptop.
That night, while Olivia is doing her skin care regimen in the first-floor bathroom, Taylor walks in.
“Hey,” Taylor says.
“Hey.” Olivia swipes micellar water over her forehead.
“Did you… do you…?” Taylor meets Olivia’s eyes in the mirror. “Did you hear back from colleges? Or did you already tell me where you’re going?”
Olivia nearly says, What do you care? Olivia can’t help thinking that, as Honor Board chair, Taylor was responsible for kicking Pippa out of school.
Olivia shrugs as she applies her face wash. “I’m going to High Point.”
Taylor shrieks. “You’re kidding! Olivia, that’s amazing!”
At that second, Madison J. walks in. “What’s amazing?”
“Olivia is going to High Point!”
“Whoa!” Madison says, holding up a hand for a high five, which Olivia reluctantly slaps. “That school is white-hot. Good for you, girl.”
“I’ve heard that campus is insane,” Taylor says. “I’m going to have to come visit you.”
Olivia knows she’s not supposed to care what other people think, but in that moment she feels so good—embraced, celebrated—that she smiles at both Taylor and Madison and says, “Thanks. It’s mostly just a relief to have it over.”
“Amen,” Madison says.
Liam gets into Rutgers, Dickinson, Fordham, and George Washington. But the school that gives Liam a full ride plus plus plus is Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It has a picturesque campus, a great material science department, and it’s only ninety minutes from New York City.
Davi is with Liam when he calls his father to tell him the news. Liam repeats the phrase, “full room and board plus books and stipend,” three times—and then after a pause, he says, “Thanks, Pop. I’m proud of me too.”
Charley Hicks gets accepted at every college she applied to: Harvard, Columbia, Bucknell, Skidmore, and Colgate.
She wanted choices and now she has them.
She’s leaning toward Colgate because that’s where her father went (we happen to know it’s also where Mav went).
When Madison J. hears this rumor, she refuses to believe it.
Who gets into Harvard and Columbia and turns them down?
During Intervis, Charley and East sneak up to the chapel roof, the first visit since the night they broke up.
The air is just starting to feel like spring: It’s chilly and damp rather than cold and raw.
Charley unbuttons her peacoat and pulls East’s warm body against hers, thinking longingly of the big soft bed they finally made proper use of their last night in Harbour.
East nuzzles Charley’s neck. “I’m so proud of you, Charles.”
Charley can’t believe she got into every college.
She can’t believe she got into Harvard. But along with this pride is fear of the unknown.
She loves it here at Tiffin. She loves her classes, her teachers, her friends—and East. She isn’t exactly eager to move on.
“I’m thinking Columbia,” she says. “Because then we can be in New York together.”
East is quiet, and Charley wonders if she sounds clingy or needy. (Yes.) Who chooses a college because of her high school boyfriend? (Lots of people, probably.)
Finally, he says, “If you want to go to Columbia, I’ll choose NYU.”
Charley pulls back. “What?”
“But if you go to Harvard, I’ll say yes to Babson.”
She swats his chest. “What are you talking about?”
“Or we can go to Colgate together.”
“Stop teasing.”
He grins at her. “You’re not the only one who got into every college. I got into NYU, Babson, and Colgate.”
“You’re not serious?” she says. “You didn’t apply to college.”
“I changed my mind.”
“East, stop.”
He pulls out his phone, scrolls, clicks—and shows her… his acceptance letter from NYU. Is this real? Then from Babson, then Colgate. “I wanted to surprise you,” he says. “But also not make you afraid that I was stalking you.”
It takes Charley a minute to process. East did go see Mav, he did apply to colleges, he did get into all three schools. “What would you have done if we were still broken up?”
He hugs her so tightly she can barely breathe. “I never asked myself that because I knew we’d get back together.”
Charley can’t stop smiling. “Where should we go, then?”
“You pick.”
“I want to go to Harvard,” she says.
“Good,” East says. “Because I’m sick of New York City, and no offense, but Colgate is too much like Tiffin for my tastes—remote and freezing cold.”
“So you’ll go to Babson?” she says.
“It was already my first choice,” he says. “Boston, here we come.”
“Cambridge for me,” Charley says.
East kisses the tip of her nose. “You’re a proper Harvard snob already.”
By the next day, all of us have heard the news: Charley has decided on Harvard, and East, unbeknownst to anyone, applied to college and will be attending Babson College, majoring in business with a concentration in entrepreneurship.
And here we thought he was too cool for school.
It’s a second Christmas for Mav in the college counseling office.
A Vanda orchid is delivered, courtesy of Madison J.
’s mother, Naomi. Joe Stringfellow, Royce’s father, sends a red velvet cake from Caroline’s.
Vik Banerjee sends a gorgeous sage-green cashmere sweater from his fashion label, Out of Office.
Charley’s mother, Fran, sends a coffee-table book of Mary Cassatt paintings, which is a thoughtful gift.
(Though Mav and Charley have stopped meeting for Art Appreciation; she’s too busy with “end of school” stuff, she says, which Mav understands to mean that she’d rather spend her Wednesday evenings with East. It’s a loss for Mav, but he gets it.) Olivia H-T’s mother, Diane, sends a pair of Ted Muehling candlesticks, which (Mav googles) retail for thirteen hundred dollars apiece (he considers reselling them on eBay).
Finally, Jesse Eastman sends Mav a five-hundred-dollar gift certificate to Deadhorse Hill, which is Mav and Amanda’s favorite restaurant in Worcester.
This gift prompts Mav to call his estranged wife. He catches her just after the Colbert boys’ lacrosse game but before she heads to Blair Hall for dinner.
He says, “What if I took you to brunch at Deadhorse Hill on Sunday?”
She gasps. “Are you a mind reader? I’ve been dreaming about their croquettes. Are we bringing the boys?”
“How about just us?” Mav says. Over spring break, he and Amanda spent some time together, and she confided that she’d stopped seeing the elementary school principal. I’m not sure why I was even with him, Amanda said. I think I was just acting out.
“I’d like that,” Amanda says now. “Just us.”
Mav is hoping that the croquettes, lobster eggs Benedict, and some very light orange mimosas might change Amanda’s mind about proceeding with the divorce. At any rate, it couldn’t hurt.
The gifts are nice, though the expression of gratitude that means the most to Mav comes in the form of an email from Liam’s father in Queens.
It reads: Thank you for helping Liam get into college.
After losing my older son to a drug overdose, it means more than you can possibly imagine to know that Liam is on a good path.
I appreciate all you’ve done for my boy. Sincerely, Bobby Donovan.
With college decisions out of the way, the weather getting warmer, and the wildflowers in the Pasture starting to bloom (marked by Dub Austin’s loud, incessant sneezing, someone get that boy some Claritin!), springtime officially arrives at Tiffin.
Most of us welcome it—we can tie our jackets around our waists, and Mrs. Wully can teach her third-form English class outside—but the sixth-formers start growing nostalgic.
Their time at Tiffin is coming to an end.
Sixth-Form Superlatives
Vote for one person/couple per category only. Forms due to ’Bred Bulletin office by Friday, April 30.
Most Likely to Succeed: _______________________
Teacher’s Pet: ________________________________
Best-Looking: ________________________________
Cutest Couple: _______________________________
Most Mismatched Couple: _____________________
Most Tiffin Spirit: _____________________________
Biggest Change Since Third-Form: _____________