Tutors of the Rich and Famous

The optimal SAT score has grown (from 1600 to 2400), and so has the hysteria over the test. While the SAT was once thought to be an objective way of comparing the reasoning of a be-blazered Exeter student to a cow-wrangling intellectual, everyone knows now that “the test can be taught.” Aside from legacy favoring and massive donations, the rich now have another highway to Harvard—boutique SAT tutors.

In “Glamorous Disasters” by Eliot J. Schrefer ’01, Noah is one of these tutors. A recent Princeton graduate with over $80,000 owed in loans, Noah has the lucrative job—it pays $395 dollars an hour—of teaching SAT strategies to the denizens of Park Avenue. But is tutoring miniature millionaires with drug addictions easy? Well yes, it actually is. As Mr. Thayer, the father of Noah’s two students puts it, “All you do is teach seventh-grade math to eleventh-graders...You’re paid to be friends with my children and photocopy words out of the dictionary.”

The children of whom Mr. Thayer speaks, Dylan and Tuscany, are entertaining, but a bit flat. Dylan is a drugged out 17-year-old who has no motivation to do anything but go to clubs, chat on Instant Messenger and sleep. He certainly doesn’t care about the SAT, though he has an amusing tendency of incorporating Harriet Tubman into every essay. Dylan’s sister Tuscany is a 15-year-old Lolita. She easily seduces older men and pretends not to care about school, though underneath the pink sparkly exterior, she is actually interested in learning.

Though these two teenagers are painted vividly, they also seem to be very boring people who don’t show any character growth. At first I took this to be a failing on the author’s part, but upon reflection, Schrefer has accurately depicted the bland personalities of many who want for nothing (except higher SAT scores).

While spitting out lists of SAT words and math tricks is easy as pi for Noah, cultivating relationships with his students is more difficult. For Dylan and Tuscany, being popular is as easy as stealing prescription drugs from their stereotypically absent and aloof mother, Dr. Thayer. “In Dylan’s case coolness is an end in itself. But in Noah’s case, coolness means financial solvency.” The better he is ranked by his students, the more Noah is paid by his agency.

But Noah constantly struggles with the distinction between friend and student. In his dark past, Noah once offered to take the SAT for a particularly dear student, and though she demurred, the memory of the offer haunts Noah’s thoughts and current job prospects (Dr. Thayer is aware of Noah’s offer to take the SAT, and often uses it as a source of black mail).

As difficult as it is for Noah to be a friend and teacher at the same time, Noah also feels as if he has been thrust into a parental position. To make up for Dr. Thayer’s disregard for her daughter, Noah tries to expose Tuscany to a larger world than the hot clubs and hot 30-year-old men in New York City. Eventually, like the hired tutors of the Jane Austen era, Noah becomes Tuscany’s full time teacher.

But parent, teacher, or friend, Noah is also a recent college graduate who is trying to figure out what to do next, and how to pay for it. After graduating from Princeton, Noah believes that he must go forth to do something important, or at least just change the world. And if he can’t change the world, he might as well make some solid money.

This mentality reminded me of many Harvard students walking confusedly in between the Teach for America and Goldman Sachs booths at the career fair. (Which makes sense, since the author of this thinly veiled roman à clef was a Harvard student and Winthrop House resident.) Like Noah, many feel the weight of the expectations that come with a name brand education.

Full of philosophical musings (Noah was a Comparative Literature major, after all), Noah begins to realize that theoretical thinking in the real world helps as little as it does on the SAT.

When Noah helps tutor his Albanian girlfriend for the SAT (yes, his girlfriend is conveniently studying for the SAT), he constantly reminds her that she is thinking too deeply about the test questions. And though Noah waxes philosophical about the implications of his teaching, he can barely pay his rent, health insurance, or loans.

On the surface, “Glamorous Disasters” was intended as an exposé of the horrors of the SAT tutoring system. Students about to take the SAT, and parents of these children will find the language amusing and the content alarming.

For a college student, though, the unfairness of the SAT is not the real antagonist of the book—after all, the SATs are behind us. It was Noah’s story that was truly frightening—the tale of college loan payments, not knowing what to do next, and wishing it were as easy as filling in a few bubbles with a number two pencil.

—Reviewer Aliza H. Aufrichtig can be reached at aufricht@fas.harvard.edu.

Glamorous Disasters
By Eliot J. Schrefer '01
Simon & Schuster
Out Now