Successfully Hacking Into High School Cliches

Remember The Perfect Score, that absolute blot on Scarlett Johansson’s then-burgeoning career? It’s okay if you don’t—thankfully for Johansson, nobody else does either. In it, Johansson and friends come up with an elaborate ruse to steal the answers to the SAT in order to achieve that coveted double 800. It’s not the first film of its kind, nor is it (sadly) likely to be the last. After all, there’s How High, in which Method Man and Redman’s characters scatter a smart friend’s ashes over their weed plots, then smoke their way into Harvard. Really, you wouldn’t think the world needed a young-adult novel treading the same territory. Robin Wasserman, author of the popular “Seven Deadly Sins” young-adult series, wrote one anyway.

That said, Wasserman’s effort isn’t a futile one, and her novel, Hacking Harvard, fits nicely into the growing genre of oh-my-God-college-admissions fiction, even if it doesn’t exactly set a new standard. Straight off, she eliminates the most dubitable part of the standard plot. Generally, the kids involved in a plan like that of The Perfect Score are smart enough that if they were to redirect their cheating efforts toward, say, studying, they could probably do well on the test based solely on—gasp!—their own merit. The author, a Harvard alumna herself, eschews this traditional setup in favor of a bet between two groups of pranksters at rival schools: her three heroes—Max Kim, Eric Roth, and Isaac Schwarzbaum, will get someone else into Harvard, the totally unpalatable Clay Porter. And $25,000 is on the line.

Another genuinely interesting narrative kink is that Wasserman employs third-person narration—up to a point. Then, a first-person narration kicks in, but it isn’t any of the three young men; rather, it’s Alexandra Talese, another senior in their class who becomes embroiled in their scheme when she starts dating Eric. Alexandra’s the school salutatorian, and is as admissions-obsessed as anyone else. Her voice in the novel is refreshing, particularly because she provides a chance for female perspective, which Wasserman writes much better than the sometimes cartoonish three-guys-hanging-out banter that so often occupies Max, Eric, and Isaac.

To her credit, Wasserman does a consistently decent job of dashing off cultural references. Too often in this genre (generally when an author is a little too far removed from youth), attempts to recreate high school vernacular fall embarrassingly short, but Wasserman has a certain panache. When the characters dream of their future possessions after the bet is won, Eric says, “I’ve been saving up for this new Alienware desktop,” and the ounce of extra detail allows the statement to ring true where “I’m going to get a totally sweet PC, guys,” would have failed. Of course, there is such a thing as laying it on too thick, and Isaac’s dreamy “I am buying an iPhone” feels like forced relevance, thrown in during the final round of edits.

So are the envelopes thick or thin? There’s no need for a spoiler, but the characters’ admissions decisions aren’t surprising. The epilogical second-to-last chapter feels too much like the idealized endings that pervade second-rate young-adult fiction. Thankfully, Wasserman has one more trick up her sleeve—the final chapter, which opens with a simple “Bullshit.” It closes with a much more satisfying ending, proving that no matter how well-trod the territory, Wasserman finds a fresh perspective. Hacking Harvard might be too nerve-wracking a read for its target demographic, but it’s a fun read for those with a few years’ distance from the admissions process.