admissions office exactly what they wanted, reflecting their
own self-serving mythology back to them in a mirror that he had crafted for that purpose. When they looked in the mirror, the face they would see was not his but their own—men and women of upstanding character and noble purpose. The fact that no similar student had ever applied to Princeton before might have cast some doubt on the true aim of the preferences they
administered. Thanks to James Hogue, applying for admission to the Princeton Class of 1992
under the name Alexi Indris-Santana, the righteousness of their intentions could now be made plain.
“You will find that Part I of the Application for Admission is incomplete,” Santana
wrote. “I have not attended an organized school since my mother and I moved from Topanga,
California to Europe in 1978,” he explained. “I have been living independently here in the
Mohave Desert since 1985, while my mother currently resides in Switzerland.” Cleverly
blending elite geography (Topanga, Switzerland), with his life in the Mohave Desert, Santana’s story appealed to the admissions officers’ yen for adventure while reassuring them that he came from a familiar, elevated cultural background that would help him fit in with his privileged classmates. By stressing the fact that he was living independently, apart from his mother, he also made himself eligible for increased levels of financial aid while removing the necessity to forge a set of documents from a second fictional character—his mother.
“Even though my formal education is lacking I do not consider myself disadvantaged for
that reason,” he wrote. Pronouncing himself to be “self-educated,” he forswore any claim to inferior status, in language that might have been taken directly from Ben Franklin’s diaries.
Having sent clear signals that he should be given preference as a Hispanic student, he filled out the racial preference question on the application, “How would you describe yourself (check
one),” with the coy notation, “I prefer not to respond.” By checking the report of Hogue’s SAT
scores from the College Board (730 verbal, 680 math), Princeton could verify that the applicant was both “Mexican American” and a U.S. citizen.
The facts of his life were plain enough. Born on January 7, 1969, his father, Oscar Carlos
Santana, was a self-employed potter; his mother, born Susan Vindriska, was a sculptress with an undergraduate degree from the Universidad Nacional Autó-noma de México and a graduate
degree from the Pacific School of Art. His permanent home address was the “state line” on the Utah and Arizona border; he could be reached at post office box 1968 in St. George, Utah. He had worked as a mosaic-tile maker, a cattle herder on the Lazy T ranch, a race-horse exerciser for a man named Bud Payton, and as a construction worker. He was interested in studying
architecture, art, humanistic studies, visual arts, and science in human affairs, with a particular interest in Western water policy as it related to farming and ranching.
But it was the details of Santana’s life as a self-educated ranch hand in the Mohave
Desert that made the Princeton admissions officers swoon. “As a person who spends several
months tending to a one-man herding station,” Santana wrote, “I look forward to excitement.”
He told Princeton about a “grueling, but wacky” cross-country relay race called the “Levi’s Ride and Tie,” run by teams consisting of a horse and two people. While one member of the team sets off running, the other rides the horse ahead to a predetermined spot where the runner finds it and then rides ahead to the next hitching place, where his partner mounts the horse. Santana had learned about the race from his friend Renee Vera, who would drop by his herding station on her spirited Arabian mare, Goodnuf.
What Santana offered Princeton was a storybook universe that embodied all the
own self-serving mythology back to them in a mirror that he had crafted for that purpose. When they looked in the mirror, the face they would see was not his but their own—men and women of upstanding character and noble purpose. The fact that no similar student had ever applied to Princeton before might have cast some doubt on the true aim of the preferences they
administered. Thanks to James Hogue, applying for admission to the Princeton Class of 1992
under the name Alexi Indris-Santana, the righteousness of their intentions could now be made plain.
“You will find that Part I of the Application for Admission is incomplete,” Santana
wrote. “I have not attended an organized school since my mother and I moved from Topanga,
California to Europe in 1978,” he explained. “I have been living independently here in the
Mohave Desert since 1985, while my mother currently resides in Switzerland.” Cleverly
blending elite geography (Topanga, Switzerland), with his life in the Mohave Desert, Santana’s story appealed to the admissions officers’ yen for adventure while reassuring them that he came from a familiar, elevated cultural background that would help him fit in with his privileged classmates. By stressing the fact that he was living independently, apart from his mother, he also made himself eligible for increased levels of financial aid while removing the necessity to forge a set of documents from a second fictional character—his mother.
“Even though my formal education is lacking I do not consider myself disadvantaged for
that reason,” he wrote. Pronouncing himself to be “self-educated,” he forswore any claim to inferior status, in language that might have been taken directly from Ben Franklin’s diaries.
Having sent clear signals that he should be given preference as a Hispanic student, he filled out the racial preference question on the application, “How would you describe yourself (check
one),” with the coy notation, “I prefer not to respond.” By checking the report of Hogue’s SAT
scores from the College Board (730 verbal, 680 math), Princeton could verify that the applicant was both “Mexican American” and a U.S. citizen.
The facts of his life were plain enough. Born on January 7, 1969, his father, Oscar Carlos
Santana, was a self-employed potter; his mother, born Susan Vindriska, was a sculptress with an undergraduate degree from the Universidad Nacional Autó-noma de México and a graduate
degree from the Pacific School of Art. His permanent home address was the “state line” on the Utah and Arizona border; he could be reached at post office box 1968 in St. George, Utah. He had worked as a mosaic-tile maker, a cattle herder on the Lazy T ranch, a race-horse exerciser for a man named Bud Payton, and as a construction worker. He was interested in studying
architecture, art, humanistic studies, visual arts, and science in human affairs, with a particular interest in Western water policy as it related to farming and ranching.
But it was the details of Santana’s life as a self-educated ranch hand in the Mohave
Desert that made the Princeton admissions officers swoon. “As a person who spends several
months tending to a one-man herding station,” Santana wrote, “I look forward to excitement.”
He told Princeton about a “grueling, but wacky” cross-country relay race called the “Levi’s Ride and Tie,” run by teams consisting of a horse and two people. While one member of the team sets off running, the other rides the horse ahead to a predetermined spot where the runner finds it and then rides ahead to the next hitching place, where his partner mounts the horse. Santana had learned about the race from his friend Renee Vera, who would drop by his herding station on her spirited Arabian mare, Goodnuf.
What Santana offered Princeton was a storybook universe that embodied all the
Similar Books
