When a Kid Goes Green, Getting In Is Only the Beginning

The call came at 3:15 p.m. "Mom, I got in!" "Read me the letter." I demanded, not quite allowing myself to believe the kid was now a Dartmouth man, or at least a Dartmouth man-about-to-be. But there they were. Karl Furstenberg's official words, riding the joy in the kid's voice, "Congratulations' It is with great pleasure that I inform you of your admission to Dartmouth College as a member of the class 0f 2002."

Then it hit me. Life would no longer be the same. Never mind that the kid would be leaving for college, that the nest would be empty. I had more important things on my mind. For from that moment on I became a Dartmouth Mom.

The first act of my new career was to buy him the green hooded Dartmouth sweatshirt he had been eyeing for

months, the same months he had been looking to other college sweatshirts, to other campuses, to see what might fit. He had made the college crawl to the urban and rural, the

large and small, the Ivy and non. But after each visit his refrain was the same: "It's nice, but it's not Dartmouth."

He didn't seem to mind that Dartmouth is in the same town he grew up in. But then he has forged his own brand of relationship with Dartmouth almost from the start. As a toddler he drew smiles from Dartmouth students as he walked up Main Street in a spiderman hat pulled completely over his face. For years he has played basketball in Alumni Gym, cheered Dartmouth teams, felt the heat of the bonfire. By the time his high school buddies were champing at the bit to get out of small-town life, he wanted more than ever to go another kind of distance—to the other side of the Green. "Is he going to live at home?" everyone asks. Not a chance. He's going away to college. It just won't take long to drive there.

We've agreed to some ground rules. His dad and I have promised tonever show up in his dorm room without an invite. The kid has claimed

"there's no way" he will ever set foot in the department in which his dad is a professor. But we've all agreed that if we see him on campus or around town, it will be permissible to say hello. Maybe even occasionally to have lunch together.

Meals together might even be fun, the kid allows. "I can bring friends over for a home-cooked meal," he said that first night of Dartmouth acceptancehood, "except that I don't like what you cook." "So eat at Thayer," said I. "And don't even think that I'm going to do your laundry." "I'm going to do it in the dorms. I kind of like doing laundry, " he retorted. He's done it once, but I let that slide.

Instead, I think about how far we've all come to reach this moment. I diink about the sleepless night his dad and I spent after reading A is for Admission, the book written by former Dartmouth admissions staffer Michele Hernandez '89.

"How can anyone get into Dartmouth? " we had worried into the wee hours. I think about how the kid followed one piece of advice from that book that might have helped his ease: he retook the SATs since, Hernandez says, most students score higher each time. I marvel at the caliber of his fellow 2oo2s, all 1,136 of them drawn from a pool that topped 10,000 hopefuls. Nearly 25 percent were valedictorians. Another 12 percent were salutatorians. Thirteen students had perfect SAT scores. Another 255 scored 800 on either the math or verbal sections. "Whoa! How'd we get in?" said the kid and a Dartmouth-woman-to-be friend, only half-joking.

I think, too, about the good parental advice we got at one of the many colleges we visited. Don't make too many changes while your child is adjusting to his or her new life, we were told. Specifically, don't immediately turn your student's room into a guest room. If you're planning to divorce, wait a few more months. And, here's one I never thought of before: Don't put the family pet to sleep.

The cat yawns, not knowing how lucky she is. Lucky us. The kid can come over to feed the cat when we're away. Or move into the house if we go on sabbatical.

The kid is in daydream mode too. "I can't wait till my 25th Reunion," he said that first night of his acceptance. "I'll be driving up to Hanover with my wife and kids and everyone will be cheering."

"Don't you have to gradu- ate first? " a professor friend chides him. The kid says; nothing.

But I'm thinking, guess whose class the kid won't be taking.

The kid eyed the greem-hooded sweatshirt for months. The sale was final when he joined the class of 2002