How insecure is Princeton? No, no. I’m just askin’. Really. How insecure do you think a school like Princeton is? Admission makes a point of Princeton dropping to #2 on the list of incoming student applications, an unseemly blemish for the university … Oh no! Wait. Is that really important? Personally, I find “number of applications received” equally on par, educationally importance-wise, as “ferocity of mascot” and “school color scheme.” Does Princeton really send admission officers to high school to drum up business? Really? That can’t be. Princeton doesn’t need to advertise. It’s Princeton. Please review.
Tina Fey plays Portia Nathan, Princeton’s #2 or #3 admissions officer, depending on how you read the scene. You kind of have to go out of your way not to like Tina Fey. You may not care for Admissions, but it will do nothing to dissuade you from that premise. Portia is on her Go Princeton! Victory recruiting tour when dogged by John Pressman (Paul Rudd), the head of the kind of school which doesn’t exist in real life. His school is set on a farm and the entirety of tiny student body is know-it-all jerks. Huh. Lemme stop right there – if your child is a counter-cultural know-it-all jerk, you don’t send her to a farm doubling as an alternate school. Anyhoo, John won’t leave Portia alone because he has proof that weird genius Jeremiah (Nat Wolff) is 
Portia’s long lost left-for-adoption son. Oh, btw, he’s also a senior interested in applying to Princeton. God love a movie with intelligent characters and an idiot plot.
Jeremiah introduces himself to Portia by citing the origin of her Shakespearean name and then comparing it to a dozen others that also mean “wisdom” (“Sophia” is a good one, others … less). This is the part of Admission that endeared me. I like it when humor is clever even when the plot is not. OTOH, when Portia enters a frat party disguised as a student – that part is much less endearing.
The idea that Princeton has to step up to the responsibility plate for this future meltdown disguised as a teenager is a little odd. As is the idea that Princeton is the only place that would satisfy Young Indiana Rain Man’s intellectual curiosity demeans the entirety of higher education, doesn’t it? Geez, even Arizona State has a library.
Admission is one of those movies I liked well enough while watching, but found more and more disturbing upon reflection. Within the confines, there are two parental gestures of supreme love in this film so outrageous as to inspire tears; in retrospect, however, neither seems to make sense within the context of the players. And like almost any film centered about an Ivy League school, Admission promotes the same weird all-or-nothing Ivy League ceiling as if, say, a kid who attends Rutgers isn’t as worthy as a kid who gets into Princeton. Sorry, but that mentality has got to go. Do we care less about the kids who attend “inferior” schools? Of course not. Didn’t get into Princeton? Well, the very fact that you thought you could means you’re going somewhere … good luck to you. I hope you get a movie someday. And then I’ll pan it, too.
Princeton’s got a Jones
For collecting future denies
This cause Ms. Portia owns
Get ready for no surprise
This film ain’t no treasure
But I can’t seem to quit
Perhaps a guilty pleasure
I hate to “admit” it ;)
Rated PG-13, 107 Minutes
D: Paul Weitz
W: Karen Croner
Genre: College for Dummies
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Less-than-inscrutable admissions officers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Illiterates
