The Ivies - Alexa Donne Page 0,4

you transferred in from public school, I heard? That’s cool. You’ll have to tell us all about it at lunch.”

And that was how I joined the Ivies. That simple. So I put up with all the rules and social hierarchy—of which I am at the bottom—because I’m flattered by their attention, because I don’t want to be tossed out on my ass, and because being their friend has its benefits, starting with helping me get to the top of the academic pecking order. My life at Claflin has inevitably been easier, better, because of the company I keep. The Ivies opened a door, and I stepped through it. So I am Penn.

But the secret quota rules don’t start and end with students deferring to each other, which few outside the Ivies do. The school itself enforces who can and can’t apply—or at least who gets a real shot at the hyperelites. Enter the superpowered college counselor.

Claflin has seven of them, a ridiculous number given the size of the student body, and we’re “randomly” assigned to a counselor in junior year. Everyone knows that if you aren’t assigned to Karen “Ivy Whisperer” Bankhead, your chances are automatically halved. Ms. Bankhead has been in the industry nearly thirty years and has all the top elites on lock—a recommendation letter from her is as good as an acceptance. She controls most of the spots at the Ivies, as well as the rest of the T20s (top twenty ranked colleges, according to U.S. News & World Report’s list). It is pure coincidence that the richest and most connected Claflin students “randomly” get Bankhead, of course. Avery, Margot, and Sierra got her.

Emma and I were stuck with a new guy, Tipton. Twenty-four, bro-y, and far too gullible, he came to Claflin this year after working at some private school in Georgia. He didn’t know the elite-school rules. He didn’t know it was his job to limit who applied where.

Which is how I was able to apply single-choice early action to Harvard.

I check my phone. It’s 12:55. In approximately four hours, I’ll find out whether Avery Montfort is going to kill me.

I turtle into my fluffy down coat and make my way across the quad to my next class as a crisp wind slams against me. Claflin’s campus is stupidly picturesque, with red-bricked Georgian buildings dotting leafy green paths, though in blustery mid-December the trees are brown and bare. I watch my feet shuffle over the gravel path edged with short, strawlike grass, and I nearly plow into a tour group smack-dab in the middle of the quad. Rebecca Ito, super student and Ivy competition ranked fourth behind Avery, Sierra, and Emma, is delivering the Claflin spiel to the throng of eager well-to-dos and their shivering offspring.

“Claflin keeps student numbers low so each student may benefit from the maximum individualized attention and resources. There are only four hundred and forty students across grades nine through twelve, with an average student-to-teacher ratio of eleven to one. Every classroom is outfitted with state-of-the-art technology, and the school focuses on conversation-based learning. Claflin students thrive, inside and outside the classroom. And an impressive average of twenty-seven percent of our senior class is admitted into the Ivy League.”

I stop short with a frown and walk around the group, grass crunching beneath my boots. A couple sporting a Birkin bag and a Rolex between them raise their brows at the Ivies statistic, and the woman thumbs through the Claflin admissions brochure with interest. It’s strange to see my friends’ model grins staring back at me from the cover. A statistic I don’t hear Rebecca parroting to the parents: while only 17 percent of the student body are students of color, notably 60 percent of the students featured on the school website and in the brochures fall under the umbrella of diversity. So Sierra, who is Black, and Margot, a Korean American, get to play cover girls.

That’s Claflin Academy in a nutshell: private, elite, and bleeding bullshit from every red-bricked building. Not that I’m not happy to take advantage of the school’s desire to appear generous. I attend Claflin on an almost-full-ride scholarship, thanks to my skills at rowing and lower-middle-class “sob story.” My mother is an elementary school teacher, which is apparently tragic. Single mom, too. I am shrouded in scandal. Anyway, I look great on paper for the school, and even better at the national championships.

I check my phone one more time before ducking into journalism class, in