"A well-written, intricately plotted, and sympathetic portrayal of the pressures that some elite college-bound kids experience during senior year." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review ( )

Love love loved this book - as did my 12yo, who (I later discovered when my pages were never where left off) was reading the story when I put the kindle down.

Ariel Kaplan does a great job building the plot - when you find yourself railing at the characters in the book like they are standing right in front of you, you know you've found a winner. She also does a great job with voice - Misha's is loud and clear and you will be rooting for her. Smart, snappy dialogue and great supporting characters.

Mischa Abramavicius is an over-achiever who has done EVERYTHING she should to get into college, so when the college rejections start pouring in, you feel her shock. And she doesn't sit back and woe-is-me, she takes action with a delightfully clever group of teen hackers. The anxiety and stress she feels is tangible, and I think readers will relate.

I was surprised this was listed as children's fiction, and think it's more geared to the younger end of YA in terms of being relatable to the situation. I love the book and will be looking forward to more from the author. ( )

We Regret to Inform You - An Overachiever’s Guide to College Rejection by Ariel Kaplan had me thinking I knew exactly what was going to happen and I was completely wrong! Mischa is an overachiever at a private school and she has to be - her Mom worked very hard and went without to make sure Mischa was in the best school possible and would be accepted into a top tier college.

Mischa was in the top of her class and involved in all the right clubs and activities.

Admissions day has finally arrived and every email is a rejection - not just the top tiers, not just the middle tiers - even her safety school! She can’t understand why - someone had to have sabotaged her and she just knows it is her nemesis Meredith Dorsay - who - coincidentally has been accepted into all the top schools and there is no way she deserves to be…

Mischa and her friends have to figure out what is going on, in the meantime Mischa cannot let her Mom find out because she knows she will be crushed.

Lots of twists and turns, ups and downs and one I found myself unable to put down. ( )

Mischa Abramavicius is a scholarship student at Blanchard, an expensive private school in the Northern Virginia area, and like everyone else in her senior class, she's waiting on pins and needles for college acceptance letters. Mischa has done everything right - grades, test scores, extracurriculars (as she describes herself, I grabbed every brass ring someone put in front of me, and I was good at it), but on Admissions Day, she is rejected from school after school, even her safety school. Something must be wrong - and something is.

As Mischa figures out what went wrong and what to do about it - with the help of The Ophelia Syndicate, three hackers who make up the all-girl STEM club - she allows her mom, a lawyer, to believe she DID get into her safety school, and tries to figure out who she is if she isn't brass-ring Mischa. Who is she really, what does she want, what does she care about - and what can she do, now that following the rules hasn't gotten her the promised results?

See also: Accelerated by Bronwen Hruska (adult), 90 Days of Different by Eric Walters (YA)

Quotes

Four wasted years. I could have done anything. I could have been happy. (45)

"Think about it this way. Any any point in your life, you are two people. There's the Mischa you think you are, and then there's the Mischa everybody else sees." (Emily, 92)

"Opportunity is responsibility!" (Mischa's mom, quoting her mom, 115)

I'd never been anywhere or done anything, because I'd kind of thought those were things you did after high school. Like being interesting was some kind of a payoff. (171)

You go up a mile or two, you look out at the horizon, and you can see what all our struggles are worth. They have exactly as much meaning as we give them, and not one bit more. (217)

"And the stuff that can't be ranked doesn't matter." (Nate to Mischa, 237) ( )

Warning: There may be Spoilers

Your mom works hard and sacrifices to send you to a private school so that you can get into a good college. You work hard in school to get good grades, join clubs to pad your extracurriculars, and basically do everything you're asked to do--yet you get accepted to 0 of your 7 schools.

That's what happens to Mischa. And then she finds out that her transcript and recommendation letters were tampered with.

To be fair to Mischa, she does try to tell someone at the school (someone we later finds out is fired for not following directions) but she doesn't tell her mother or any other adults. She tells her friend Nate who gets her involved with the Ophelias. And again, instead of telling an adult, they go off investigating on their own. (And of course, they discover Blanchard's dirty little secret. Money makes the world go 'round.)

Mischa acts like there are no other college choices beyond the 7 that she picked to apply to. Is it disappointing to not get into any colleges of your choice? Sure it is! Especially when many of your friends do get in to their choices. But there are many more choices out there.

I can somewhat understand Mischa not wanting to apply elsewhere since she believes they'll get the same transcript and letters that the other 7 colleges got. (Something Marlowe seems to indicate near the end.) But I know there are colleges out there that will take just about anyone.

I don't quite understand who hacked Mischa's instagram account or why. ( )