Audition by Barbara Walters

college. I wanted more than anything to go to Wellesley, a renowned all-female college then and now, on the outskirts of Boston, and I applied there. Some of the smartest women I would come to know later in my life graduated from Wellesley—women like Hillary Clinton, Lynn Sherr, and Diane Sawyer. I also applied to Pembroke College in Rhode Island as my “safe” choice. My third application went to a small college located in Bronxville, a town in nearby Westchester. The college was named Sarah Lawrence.
    Sarah Lawrence was an all-female college, barely twenty years old, and considered to be very avant-garde and progressive in its education. There were no exams, no required core curriculum, and no actual grades. You took only three major subjects per semester and worked closely with a professor who, following the British tradition, was known as your adviser, or “don.” It was a college that attracted the adventurous, the arty, the self-starter scholar, and the debutante. I was none of the above, but I applied because my then best friend, Shelby, was applying.
    Sarah Lawrence had a unique admissions process. When you applied you were sent a form and asked to write answers to specific questions, such as, “Name two books you have read recently which you disliked. Tell why.” And “Are you concerned with any problem in the fields of government, politics, or economics about which you would like to learn more? Why?” These questions are actually lifted verbatim off my own fifty-year-plus-old admission application, which at my request, Sarah Lawrence recently sent me as research for this book.
    I did fine on the two books I disliked— Eminent Victorians , by Lytton Strachey, whom I criticized for his lack of “color and realism” in his characterizations, and The Snake Pit , by Mary Jane Ward, for being “repetitious” and “not offering the slightest hint as to how to remedy the sorry conditions in mental hospitals.” I also did fine on the government question, waxing on and on in my cramped little handwriting about the battle of Labor vs. Capital, about which I cared little, to be honest, but was prompted by reading about a series of recent strikes: a teachers’ strike and one targeting AT&T.
    However, my hair stood on end when I read the barefaced lies I proffered to Sarah Lawrence so many years ago. My response to “What has meant most to you in your education outside of school?” was: “Sunday school, which helped me appreciate the force of God and enabled me to increase my faith and understanding in His power.” Well, I never ever went to Sunday school! Did I think a nun was going to read my application? And then absolve me of my sin? I must have, because I can come up with no other explanation.
    Another whopper came in my answer about the experience I had had in the arts. While part of my answer was true—I was indeed “particularly fond of dramatics” (I had been in several school plays since my debut as a bird)—what was unbelievable was my claim that I had worked in a summer stock company in Connecticut and “so gained much valuable technical experience.” Good heavens! I never worked in summer stock in my life. Thank goodness Sarah Lawrence never checked the facts.
    But what was really myth shattering was the portion of the admission forms assigned to my parents. All my life I thought my mother had filled it out and that my father had added one withering, dismissive line: “Barbara is a very normal girl with normal interests.” Period. I thought he hadn’t given the whole thing much thought. But no. Looking at the original admission forms, it turned out to be my father who had written the entire four-page evaluation and it was immensely tender.
    Asked about my high school experiences, he wrote that I took a “good interest” in my schoolwork; that I was proud of my “good work and good marks” that I make “friends easily and hold them.” Asked about my interests, he described me as