BOOKS
The Golden Ticket
What do we, as parents, really mean when we say we want the best for our children?
Irena Smith addresses this question from a unique vantage point: as a former Stanford admissions officer, a private college counselor in Palo Alto, and a mother of three children each of whom struggle to find their place in the long shadow of Stanford University. Her honest, raw, and deeply insightful memoir opens a much-needed conversation about extreme parenting, the weight of generational expectations, and what happens when Gen-X dreams meet unexpected realities.
Written as a series of responses to actual college admissions essay prompts, The Golden Ticket takes the reader from the smoke-filled lobby of the Hebrew Aid Society in Rome where Irena and her parents await asylum with other Soviet refugees in 1977 before landing in San Francisco, to the overpriced house she and her husband buy in Palo Alto in 1999, to the hushed inner sanctum of the Stanford admissions office. Through these interconnected vignettes, readers follow Irena as she grows a highly successful, sought-after private counseling practice, working with some of the most tightly-wound, competitive college applicants—and their striving, anxious parents—while struggling to keep her own family from unraveling as one by one, her children are diagnosed with autism, learning differences, depression, and anxiety. And although Irena does not initially understand her children—or how to help them—she will not stop stumbling and learning until she figures it out.
The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays challenges us to redefine success and encourages us to embrace the unexpected. It's a sharp-eyed, witty, heart-wrenching depiction of the messy, challenging parts of parenting you won't see on Facebook or Instagram as well as of hard-fought, hard-won triumphs and moments of connection. Above all, it's an invitation to a more curious, more compassionate, and more fulfilling life.
AWARDS
2023 Gilda Prize Shortlist
2023 Best Book Awards Winner in Nonfiction: Creative
2023 Best Book Awards Finalist in Best New Nonfiction and Parenting & Family
2023 Literary Titan Book Award Gold Winner
REVIEWS
“...a potential antidote to the fevered belief that being admitted to an elite college will spell the difference between a successful life vs. a doomed future. That’s a fever that’s hard to break for many families, but Smith’s highly personal, literate, sometimes snarky account might just do the trick.”
—Michael Nietzel, Forbes
“At a time of an unprecedented youth mental health crisis, Irena Smith's addictively engaging, literary, witty, and heartrending memoir couldn't be more timely and important. Thank goodness she had the courage, smarts, and perfect perspective—at "the intersection of unbridled ambition and family dysfunction"—to create it.”
—Katherine Ellison, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention
“Tackling childhood and parenting in a new way, The Golden Ticket shows that growing up in America is an increasingly difficult job. With humor and pathos, Irena Smith draws the reader behind the curtain of college admissions, where life is more complicated than any kid's file.”
—Malcolm Harris, author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World and Kids These Days
“Smith’s raw candor is compelling, beautiful and meaningful, and it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.”
—Jordana Horn, contributing editor, Kveller [online magazine]
“Irena Smith has crafted a brilliant, hilarious, and keenly perceptive memoir that should be required reading for any parent.”
—Sonya Huber, author of Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto
“I started reading and couldn’t stop. Irena Smith has written a remarkable memoir of her life—painfully honest, touching, and marvelously funny, mixing wisdom about the madness of college admission today and her own family story.”
—Jon Reider, coauthor of Admission Matters, former Stanford admission officer, and cofounder of SLE, Stanford’s freshman humanities program
