Hacking Harvard

by Robin Wasserman

  Yes, I talked her into it. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I guilted her into it. And it's possible that, in my zeal, I may have exaggerated some of the facts and figures of exactly how much devastation the Wadsworth Courier was wreaking on the environment. But once I was on the staff, I wrote a profile about her new pro- recycling campaign, so that's got to count for something.

  Evetyone was happy.

  I think I've already mentioned that Evan Stein, student life editor of the yearbook, wanted my job. But I might have forgotten to explain that it was because he had been in line for editor-in-chief--

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  and deserving of it, whether you went by seniority or majority rule--until the principal explained to the yearbook sponsor that someone who'd been caught smoking pot in the parking lot, twice, wouldn't make the best role model for other students and should, if at all possible, be kept out of any prominent leadership positions.

  Don't look at me. I didn't force that joint into his mouth. I didn't light it up.

  I only called the principal pretending to be a reporter--technically true, since I still had my press pass from my two years at the Courier-- and asked for his take on the administration's tolerant attitude toward stoners. And okay, I may have implied that a feature was in the works, with Evan and his imminent coronation for my prime example. It would have made a great article--so eventually, I'm sure someone would have written it. If you look at it that way, I was saving the principal--and Evan, and the yearbook, and the whole school, really--from public humiliation.

  Fact: I didn't lie, cheat, steal, of bribe. I just used the information that was at my disposal, and I used it to my own advantage. I wasn't like that Florida cheerleader who tried to kill off all her rivals so she could make the team, or those kids in Virginia who were cheating their way through college.

  I wasn't Bernard Salazar, groveling for cheat sheets and lunging for blackmail material.

  I wasn't Max Kim, raking in the cash with forged term papers and last-minute homework answers.

  I was Alexandra Talese, weasel, tattletale, mole, suck-up with a can-do attitude, willing to do what I needed to get what I wanted. And I guess I must have had a reputation, because they came to me.

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  ? ? ?

  "We've already given you a show of good faith," the one with the micro-mustache complained.

  "If you got into the system once, you can get in again," I told them. "Just change it back."

  "Do you really want us to do that?"

  I pictured graduation day. I pictured sitting up on the stage next to the principal, everyone staring at me, my extra tassel hanging from my cap and my speech neatly folded up on my lap. And then I pictured Katie Gibson sitting next to me, standing up and sauntering over to the podium, knowing that she was number one and I was number two.

  It's not really winning if you're in second place.

  Of course I didn't want them to do it.

  "Yes," I said, leaning back in the chair, trying to look casual, as if 1 couldn't care less about such petty things. "She--" But I couldn't choke out the word deserves.

  /deserved. Katie just^or. But that's life, right?

  "She can be the valedictorian. I don't care."

  The clean-shaven one--who could have used some deodorant-- frowned. "Do you know how much trouble it's going to be for us to bring someone else in at this stage?"

  "I don't care about that, either."

  They didn't literally show up on my doorstep, of course.

  First they e-mailed me, some cryptic message that was just intriguing enough for me to meet them in Starbucks and hear them out. That was the end of September. They told me about the bet. And then they made me the offer.

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  "We want you to keep track of what they're doing." Back then, he hadn't grown the mustache yet, but he was still ugly, his blond hair already thinning enough that I could easily picture his future comb-over. "And when the time is right, we'll want you to interfere."

  "You'll get close to Roth, he's their weak link," the other said. "Throw him off his game."

  "Why would I get involved?"

  They leaned forward, and that's when they made it: the offer I literally couldn't refuse.

  "You want to get into Harvard, right?" the shorter one asked-- they hadn't yet told me their names. "These guys are trying to screw you out of your spot. We can keep that from happening."

  "There's a backdoor into the computer system," the taller one said. "You want to guarantee an A for Admit next to your name? All you have to do is say the word."

  It sounded immoral, unethical, and, I was pretty sure, illegal. It also sounded too good to be true.

  "If you can get into the computer system and change the decisions, why do you even need me? Why don't you just hack in and make sure this guy gets rejected?"

  They looked at each other, eyes wide, then gaped at me in indignation. "That would be cheating!"

  I laid my equipment on the mahogany desk, piece by piece.

  The bugs.

  The dossiers.

  The RF jammer--disguised as a pencil--that I'd switched on during the SATs to interupt Eric's transmission signal.

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  "You think you can get in on your own?" mustache man asked, arching an eyebrow. "Someone like you?"

  I shrugged. The truth was, no. I didn't.

  Typical Northeast overachiever, high SAT scores (and I was still hoping for those perfect eight hundreds, since the Oscar-worthy performance I'd put on for Eric had been purely for show), plenty of leadership positions, four summers of prestigious internships, some community services thrown in for good measure, and . . . that was it.

  No national prizes. No prodigy-level skills. No Carnegie Hall performances or published memoirs or pending patent applications for new molecular constructs.

  Nothing to set me apart. Nothing to make me special.

  "I'll take my chances," I told them.

  "Don't bother," the mustache warned me. I wanted to reach across the desk and pluck it out, hair by hair. "We can still get into the admissions system. You back out on us now, and we will."

  There were beads of perspiration forming on his upper lip. I wondered if he could taste the sweat.

  "You back out, you can forget about getting into Harvard. It's just as easy to type in deny as it is to type admit."

  "You wouldn't do that," I said, calling what I hoped was their bluff. "You don't need me. Just find someone else."

  "We could," the mustache said, "and if necessary, we will. But we don't like people who back out on their promises. We don't back out on ours."

  "Do this one last thing for us, or we will make sure you don't get in," the other one said firmly. "We promise."

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  November-December * THE APPLICATION

  Objective: Construction of i r res istible-on-paper pe rson

  Occasionally candidates for admission make inaccurate or incomplete statements or submit false materials in connection with their applications. In most cases, these misrepresentations or omissions are discovered during the admissions process and the application is rejected. -- Harvard University Handbook for Students

  Extracurricular, Personal, and Volunteer Activities

  Objective: A dynamic, engaged, well-rounded applicant with interpersonal skills and leadership potential

  Please don't come back again," the receptionist at the Sunset Pines Retirement Home told Clay. "You frighten the residents."

  At first, reading to the blind seemed like it would be a better choice--from the sound of his voice, no one would know that Clay looked like an ex-con--but the reading part posed a problem. Not that he was illiterate.

  Not quite.

  The dog that bit him at the humane society wasn't rabid; nor was the squirrel with the broken paw. But when the angry red scratches on his arm got infected, they decided to call that quits as well.

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  The engineering club staged a mutiny when Eric
requested permission to induct Clay--until, as president, Eric amended the bylaws and added Clay as a member at large, no attendance required. And the captains of the chess club and the academic decathlon team were only too happy to tell anyone who asked that Clay was a full and valued member--at least once Clay offered his guarantee that no one would flush their heads in a toilet anymore.

  All was well, then, for Wadsworth High's chess wizards and burgeoning bridge builders; Eric, on the other hand, had vowed to infuse some element of legitimacy into each of the extracurricular endeavors. Which meant: late nights in a mildewed basement soldering stereo wires while Clay retooled an amp (engineering). Afternoons watching old game show tapes--including Max's tenth- grade championship run on Teen Jeopardy, a string of victories that ended with a spectacular meltdown when Max bankrupted himself in the final Final Jeopardy, thanks to an ill-timed inability to remember a name that had haunted his nightmares ever since: Alger Hiss (academic decathlon). A painfully long Sunday trying to explain the rules of chess, a day that, pathetically, culminated in Eric losing three checkers games in a row.

  They had more luck with the invented organizations. Clay was soon president of the Art Appreciation Society, which, according to its mission statement, "toured local galleries and museums to perform a critical analysis on current trends in modern art within the context of the classical establishment and, in order to foster the creative spirit within the community, conducted weekend and after- school art classes for children deprived of a curriculum-based outlet for their artistic efforts."

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  Mostly true: For the sake of Clay's faux-art portfolio, they had indeed visited nearly every gallery in town. And, as for deprived children, the two hours Max had spent airbrushing Lissa Roth's yearbook photo while Lissa batted her eyes at Clay easily counted as a weekend graphic arts tutorial.

  As president of the Skeptics Society, Clay--hypothetically-- moderated discussions on philosophical attempts to comprehend the universe, from Sextus Empiricus, Montaigne, and Descartes through Kant, Kierkegaard, and Hume, focusing on the transition from Enlightenment to Romantic efforts to establish a fundamental order and rationale in the natural world. There was no need for the admissions committee to know that the in-depth toundtable debates largely raged around the competing world views presented in Star Trek, the collected works of Vonnegut, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Matrix, and--Clay's chosen font of philosophy and only contribution to the discussion beyond a glazed and confused stare-- Sin City.

  "Life is shit and then you die," he said. "That's like, a philosophy or whatever, right?"

  And so it was.

  The real coup required neither fraud nor forgery--and even Max had to admit that a little full-fledged legitimacy would make their victory that much sweeter.

  "Marvelous!" the owner of the Bishop Gallery had exclaimed, gazing at the miniature canvas covered in white paint with a nearly invisible black dot at the center. "How many more are there?"

  The show hung for a week. The "gallery" was, by day, a meeting room in the back of a Somerville bowling alley that still stunk of beer

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  and sweatsocks, but Clay's work was enough of a hit to score a mention in the Cambridge Firebird, an indie arts zine published every few months by a pair of militant vegans who dreamed of someday printing on recycled paper laced with LSD.

  No matter. A show was a show; a news clipping was a news clipping.

  And Clay Porter was officially a star.

  Educational Data

  Objective: 4.0

  "We did the extracurricular crap your way," Max said. "This, we do mine."

  Eric was pacing back and forth across his den. "We could use the weak transcript to make him look deep. You know, position him as the brooding intellectual who's beyond high school."

  Max shook his head. "Cs say deep. Fs say community college. They'll never overlook that, and you know it."

  Eric did. And he also knew it was ridiculous to even hesitate. There was no room for error, nor with twenty-five thousand dollars at stake. Forging a transcript was no worse--no better, maybe, but no worse--than scamming the SATs. It wasn't necessarily the most stylish way to win, but it was clearly permitted by the terms of the bet. It would hurt no one. And, he told himself, it was in service of a greater cause--a cause that, despite everything, he still believed in. The ends justify the means.

  Right?

  ? ? ?

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  Ms. Winters didn't like Eric. He didn't need her.

  Not that she liked the students who really needed her, the deadbeat delinquents who either skipped meetings or, when they showed up, inevitably broke something. No, she preferred to stick with the timid, terrified honors students, the desperate ones willing to take advice from anyone, even a middle-aged, overmedicated burnout whose own internal guidance system had steered her directly toward a twenty-year career in the Wadsworth High School guidance department. They nodded eagerly upon receiving her flimsy advice. They pretended to believe that she cared--or maybe they were clueless enough to buy the act. Eric Roth, on the other hand, was not.

  But she accepted his request for a meeting, listening as he laid out his plans for the future. The all-purpose placid smile masked her true opinion: What a geek.

  She would have liked nothing more than to shut him up with a detention, a suspension, anything that would blemish his disgustingly perfect record and force him to realize that he wasn't so superior after all. But of course, the kids like Eric would never get into that kind of trouble.

  They were too weak, too cowardly, too dull.

  Eric was still talking, something about MIT and extension courses and since she couldn't have cared less, she was relieved when the call came in, alerting her that she'd left her headlights on. "I'll be back in a moment," she said apologetically, and then strolled out to the parking lot, hoping he would be gone by the time she got back.

  She was so grateful for the temporary reprieve that it didn't occur

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  to her to wonder how she could have left her headlights on when she hadn't turned them on in the first place.

  And it certainly never occurred to her that while she was gone, perfectly boring Eric Roth was digging through her cabinet of Permanent Files, slipping out the manilla folder marked CLAY PORTER, making a series of speedy photocopies, and then slipping everything back into place exactly as it was (just as Max had done when he'd let himself into her car).

  If she had known, maybe she would have liked him better.

  Suman Agarwal had one, and only one, job in the Harvard University admissions office. He was to pull the transcript and secondary school evaluations from the application file. Scan them into the computer system. File the hard copies in the metal filing cabinets along the wall. Then he would move on to the next application, and the next, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

  It was simple. Especially for someone who'd developed a new method for synthesizing organic molecules when he was only seventeen. Someone like Suman. Even simpler was the one rule he had to follow: Let no one else touch the applications. The admissions officers would read them online, from the comfort of their own home. A trusted secretary opened the packages, sorted the materials, and passed the transcripts along to Suman; no one else in the office was to have contact with the raw materials.

  Even Schwarz, the most diligent employee that the admissions office had ever seen, was never allowed across the sacred threshold. When he brought Suman coffee, or Doritos, or gossip, or whatever

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  else he thought might brighten Suman's day, he was always stopped just outside the filing room.

  Until the day that Suman let him in.

  "Are you sure, man?" Suman asked, one eye on his watch and one foot out the door. It was his one-month anniversary with his pissy girlfriend, who had gotten even pissier upon learning that Suman was too busy scanning in applications to treat her to a surprise anniversary picnic at Wa
lden Pond.

  Enter Schwarz.

  "No one will ever know," Schwarz assured him. "It is just for one afternoon. They will never realize you were gone."

  "I owe you one. If I had to spend another day down here . . ."

  "I am sure it is not so bad," Schwarz said. "At least there is no one looking over your shoulder. It sounds peaceful."

  "Yeah, peaceful like a crypt." Suman handed over the keys to the filing cabinets, the code for the scanner, and the security password for the digitized files. "Remember, you can't tell anyone."

  Schwarz grinned. "You can trust me."

  Fifteen minutes later, Clay Porter's permanent file--the one submitted by the Wadsworth High guidance department--was stuffed into Schwatz's monogrammed L.L. Bean backpack. A lovingly made fake had been inserted into the file and scanned into the system, detailing Clay's A-plus performance in every AP class Wadsworth High had to offer. The forged recommendation from guidance confirmed that Clay Porter was "enthusiastic and engaged, ravenous for knowledge and intellectual challenge--a joy."

  Schwatz spent the next four hours scanning in files, but when you could calculate cube roots in your head while simultaneously

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  playing out a game of mental chess, time passed quickly. And in the end, a few hours and more than a few paper cuts were a small price to pay.

  Supplementary Material

  Objective: Demonstration of exceptional artistic talent

  The portfolio of slides included:

  Distance: The white space on this canvas represents the emotional space between man and woman, while the narrow blue border indicates the tie of humanity that binds us together, disguising the empty space as a material presence. Note the smooth brushstrokes giving way to a rough patchiness, to evoke the active tension between turbulence and peace.