<p>impressive enough, indeed.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2006-03-29-how-opal-mehta_x.htm[/url]”>http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2006-03-29-how-opal-mehta_x.htm</a></p>
<p>The article in USA today says she snagged the book and movie deal when she was 17 and now she is a 19 yo sophomore at Harvard.</p>
<p>My son was deferred from Harvard a couple of years ago. He wasn’t a grunt. He was highly qualified. He loves the college he finally chose to attend.</p>
<p>KV thus wrote most of the novel while a freshman at Harvard, and under a tight deadline. I expect that the publisher thought it would be more of a success if it could boast that the author was a freshman (again Paolini was 17 when he wrote Eragon and 18 when his book was picked up). There is no other explanation as to why it pressured her into writing 50 pages a week while preparing for her finals. It was KV’s ignorance about the economics of publishing best-sellers and her hubris that led her to think she could do it all. At the time she signed her contract, she probably had not even taken a midterm.</p>
<p>Thank you for the link to an excerpt of her book.</p>
<p>Forget the plagiarism issues for the moment. Obviously so much of her character in the book is autobiographical in nature. There are snippets in that excerpt that are so appropro of this conversation in this thread. It just all “fits”! Here are the ones that struck me: </p>
<p>“I suppose being a perfectionist could be considered a weakness. For example, I always quadruple-proofread all my papers for school. But I like to think of it as one of my strengths as well. I’ve never missed a comma.”</p>
<p>(that one kinda made me laugh about the whole proofreading thing!)</p>
<hr>
<p>"Val sighed as she looked down at the massive stack of Harvard pamphlets that were lying across my lap just in case I wanted to do some last-minute studying. “Wow, you seem pretty serious about this. Have you actually read all of these?” </p>
<p>I made a non-committal sound. Read them? There were whole sections I could recite by heart."</p>
<hr>
<p>(the reciting by heart of passages…gotta love it, lol)</p>
<p>“What can you do, right?” Val shrugged. “I had a really good interview at Amherst, so it’s not the end of the world if I don’t get in here. Harvard’s not everything.”</p>
<p>Yes it is. I bit my tongue, not wanting to offend her.</p>
<hr>
<p>(there’s that "Harvard or bust mentality!)</p>
<p>“You can go in now, Ms. Marks,” the receptionist said, saving me the need to tell Valerie that the only schools I’d even considered other than Harvard were Yale and Stanford. But those were just for the worst-case scenario. And my parents would probably die if I were forced to go to one of those schools.</p>
<p>Ever since my family moved to New Jersey from Chennai, India, I had known that I was meant to attend Harvard. Okay, so I wasn’t actually born when they moved, but I’m certain some of the Harvard vibes reached me in the womb. My parents gave up everythingmy dad abandoned his successful neurosurgery practice, my mom said good-bye to her family and gave up her work as an ob-gynso that I, their only child, would have every opportunity in the world to achieve greatness in America. And the one thing they felt was essential to my success was admission to Harvard University, the world’s finest institute of learning.</p>
<p>So before I began kindergarten, my parents came up with a plana carefully plotted and thoroughly constructed plan, which we all referred to as HOWGIH (How Opal Will Get Into Harvard). I’ve followed HOWGIH to a tee since elementary school.</p>
<hr>
<p>“I joined half those clubs only so that I could get into Harvard, and now you’re saying you’d rather I had gone to parties?”</p>
<p>Dean Anderson gave me a small, enigmatic smile. “Good luck.”</p>
<p>But I knew I was going to need more than luck. I was going to need two stretchers and a defibrillator to revive my parents after I told them the news."</p>
<hr>
<p>I still am very curious to know how she landed a $500,000 deal! There has to be more to the story. Not one article that I’ve read has addressed the unprecedented magnitude of the deal. How does a 17 year old land that kind of deal with just a book idea? I read Opal Mehta, and even if it had been all her own work, it is hardly impressive writing. Could Daddy have funded the deal?</p>
<p>Also, regarding Blair Hornsteine, did no one at Harvard question this girl’s ability to survive at Harvard given her “dire” medical condition. From what I’ve read, she was becoming progressively more ill as evidenced by the fact that with each subsequent year she was able to take fewer and fewer classes at school and had to rely more and more on home tutoring. She also had to drop PE by 10th grade. You would think that a guidance counselor doing due diligence would have written something in his recommendation about her questionable ability to live at Harvard and attend classes there. Or was Harvard supposed to send tutors to her NJ home? </p>
<p>Just wondering…</p>
<p>Re: Blair Hornstine. Harvard has admitted students with direr conditions before. See Brooke Ellison’s story (made into a film by Christopher Reeves). </p>
<p>As for KV, the two book deals was probably negotiated by the literary agent and Alloy, which took a big cut. I did read an article that suggested that the money was going to be divvied up among several parties. I’m assuming that KV would have gotten much less than the $500k.</p>
<p>It’s clear to me that the KV ascent to fame (and then infamy) was all about her and nothing about her ‘book’ or literature. It’s a shame (maybe) we never got to read the ‘dark’ first pages she submitted. What Little, Brown et al were promoting was a package. For whatever reason, they chose to believe that what she wrote was not as important as who she is (young, Indian, female, attractive, Harvard student) and that she would generate a great deal of publicity, interviews and film offers. And they were dead on - to a point.</p>
<p>Lefthand:</p>
<p>You are right about the causes of KV’s attractiveness to Little, Brown. The particular lure was the prospect of huge sales in India (in the fashion of the Chinese girl’s sales in China and the Korean girl’s sales in Korea).</p>
<p>Read the Harvard Independent’s reporting on 17st/Alloy. </p>
<p>1) They likely received a big chunk of the $500,000. </p>
<p>2) A large portion of their business is ghostwriting. </p>
<p>3) They jointly held the copyright with KV.</p>
<p>Do the math people!!! No one gets a book contract like that unless the publisher is sure the writer can produce. They had no such assurances with KV the individual, but 17St/Alloy has a long track record of producing series of books, where the later titles are ghostwritten (a la Sweet Valley.) </p>
<p>Package-Schmackage. I think it’s a much bigger con job than anyone wants to admit.</p>
<p>Alloy would have no reason to engage in such plagiarism and every motivation in the world to avoid it. When it comes to the plagiarism --it was done by KV. She admitted it herself. Alloy and Little Brown BOTH were sloppy in vetting the material but it is the writer who plagiarized. Why would Alloy want to con in this way? It may be a con in other ways ie she was packaged as a product but in terms of the plagiarism --it could not be the intent of Alloy to do anything like that.</p>
<p>Dig around, as I thought there was a news article about the book that said the advance was NOT $500,000, despite what is most commonly reported. It seems that in this story every relevant fact has been respun since the scandal broke.</p>
<p>Pay docked by nearly 1M:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/04/business/04raytheon.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/04/business/04raytheon.html</a></p>
<p>I’d like to visit the issue of packaging our applicants. Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out the acceptance stats on “organic, all-natural” applicants versus “professionally processed” ones? I would hope that adcoms of these ultra-selective colleges could recognize the provenance of the applications and choose accordingly. Am I naive? Do these schools really want to know the raw student they’re accepting, or is this really all about the marketing of aspiration? Leave it to us Americans to market the hell out of anything and everything…even our children. I would think that if this trend truly bothered those in higher education, that they could dampen or even put a stop to this. What is the relationship (if any) between packaging firms like IvyWise, and the schools. Do the schools request disclosure from applicants?</p>
<p>I noticed that IvyWise has a Nursery School admissions consulting services. Their website says:</p>
<p>Nursery School Package
The focus of this package is on creating a list of specific schools, strategizing the application process for each school, and formulating a plan and timetable for the admissions process.</p>
<p>I must be very naive. Is this common?</p>
<p>In NYC, admission to nursery school is as stress-inducing as college admission. Some nursery schools are feeder schools for specific private schools which in turn are feeder schools for HYP, which in turn are seen as the ticket to…</p>
<p>Or perhaps Harvard admissions noticed that she had gotten the $500,000 book deal. They now had a student who could pay full tuition for 4 years. ;-)</p>
<p>At the end of the day I think that this is all about the pressure that a lot of students feel as they move along through life. Sometimes inflicted upon them by their parents. In this case Harvard was the goal but should not have been. Education is the goal and that can be achieved at many places, Harvard is just one of them.</p>
<p>Harvard is probably more prone to this than other schools. Other schools have athletic recruiting and agent issues to deal with instead. See the recent Reggie Bush USC issues. Unfortunately athletes can not get a $500,000 advance unlike students who are writers.</p>
<p>Some hs athletes go pro, sign an endorsement contract with Nike, Speedo and just don’t compete for the college. It’s still a great hook for the school to say so-and-so is attending here even if the student doesn’t compete on the team.</p>
<p>Apparently some hs students are writers and could make money in their profession without going to college . . . similar to the athletes. Then again, when the writers write about their college experience they need the authenticity of actually going to college so they can provide perspective.</p>
<p>Eagle:</p>
<p>The book deal was signed after she began at Harvard, thus nearly one year after she applied. KV was writing about the admission process rather than her experience as a Harvard student.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>cloverdale - read the Harvard Independent stories. Alloy contracts out the ghost writing to independant contractors who have very tough deadlines (deliver a novel in 6 weeks is typical.) It’s those under-pressure ghostwriters who are contracted by Alloy, not Alloy who would plagiarize.</p>