When did you decide to chronicle this part of your life? https://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a15989/lacy-crawford-interview CRAWFORD: I'm actually keeping a list in a small notebook here that I began just to make sure I replied to the notes that were coming in and that I now have continued because it reads to me like a poem. What did you learn as a writer from your work with these kids? The first is that, yes, I contracted herpes so deep in my throat that it couldn't be seen on ordinary exam. I'm so sorry. CRAWFORD: Had they been aware of the things that I know now, I have no doubt they would've made different choices. And the pain was so bad that you write it felt like you had swallowed a piece of glass, and it would not go down. I wanted to help shift the frame a little bit away from their parents and under them so they could take control of the process. And Lacy Crawford joins us now from her home in Southern California. When I first started doing this work I had 15 or 20 students a year, and I focused much more on helping them with the nuts and bolts, helping them to establish deadlines, that sort of thing. I wanted to go back to school and be a senior and apply to college and pretend none of this had ever happened. Some of it is the common application—the fact that it’s easier to send an application to a school than it was when I was applying 20 years ago or more. But I have to say I’m getting many requests for help. That’s what Lacy Crawford ’96 does in her debut novel about college admissions. The second part of this is the exposure, the shaming. It serves as a pipeline to some of the best colleges and universities - Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, to name a few. Those students go on to become luminaries - judges, authors, even secretaries of state. The school knew this. Also, moving around as much as I did when I was younger inspired me to create my own path and solid day-to-day life. CRAWFORD: Right. My work with students tapered off dramatically in 2010, after I had my first child. I got more involved in their lives as the years went on. So, where did they go to college? LACY CRAWFORD: Anne doesn’t encourage Hunter to write as though he’s sending an email to his girlfriend because she wants a flirtatious tone in his college essay. What I did instead was help him figure out what it was he loved to study and what he might wish to pursue. I'm sorry that that is the way it is. What we've been missing - or at least I was missing - is to show them the forces that are arrayed against them and that are, in fact, asking them to carry that responsibility and carry that shame. I started when I was three. We are the better for those brave voices bringing their experiences forward, and we are committed to hearing and responding to their demand for recognition, accountability and change. It’s awful and terrifying. It serves as a pipeline to some of the best colleges and universities - Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, to name a few. I am hopeful that Kathy Giles, the current rector, will be able to, first, oversee the reckoning that has to happen. That’s kind of heartbreaking because if I were able to sit down with them for two hours I might be helpful, but that’s not my job anymore. Author Lacy Crawford Looks Back At Her Sexual Assault In New Memoir NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with author Lacy Crawford about her new memoir, Notes on a Silencing, about her sexual assault at an elite boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire. As I got older, and I did this more and more, I started to feel that if the student couldn’t work out the deadlines on his own, he didn’t deserve to go to that school and I wasn’t going to do the work for him. When supermodel and entrepreneur Cindy Crawford stepped foot into the first calculus class of her college career, she -- like her fellow students -- expected to learn about mathematical concepts. But the crisis has nothing to do with rich kids not getting in; it has everything to do with everyone else not even knowing where to begin. I think this happens everywhere all the time. I think some of them hired me quite simply so the mothers would have someone to call when they were freaking out after their glass of wine at dinner. So yes, I was deeply involved. I didn’t have a degree in education or counseling or anything, but I had grown up an overachiever in a family and a community that put a lot of pressure on the same type of thing. I wonder, given what the school did to you, what your response is to a statement like that. And Lacy Crawford joins us now from her home in Southern California. She documents that assault at the school and its long aftermath in her new memoir, "Notes On A Silencing." Detectives happened across documents that were in my student file that really outlined how the school had planned to silence me. I know some parents got their hands on early copies of the book. How Severe Is Your State's Coronavirus Outbreak? I wouldn’t reach out to the people whose stories are directly told, but I’m not sure they would recognize themselves. I had to see a specialist. Some of that is just demographics and more kids applying to these schools. For 15 years, Lacy Crawford worked with high school students to hone these essays, a torturous but rewarding experience that she chronicles in her forthcoming book, Early Decision. I want all of the girls and women who have ever been made to carry the blame for the aggression of men, the aggression of others - I wanted them to see that they were intended to carry that blame and that it was never theirs. A 14-year-old Lacy Crawford, just before beginning her time at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. One of them is the fact that you contracted an STD from the assault. I also had students that I took on pro bono from underserved schools who were the first in their family to go to college. We talked to Crawford about dealing with overbearing parents, how the admissions process has changed over the years—and how to get into the school of your choice without getting trampled in the college rat race. DETROW: You write so powerfully about how, years later, it would enter your life in these really jarring ways with stray comments that people would make to you. There are plenty of people contacting me already, asking for advice about college. Fishpond Australia, Early Decision: Based on a True Frenzy by LacyCrawfordBuy . What’s going on now is that some of the schools are early action so they let you apply to other schools “early action” as well. Growing up in Seattle, Crawford played for Rainier Beach High, a school that has produced a number of other NBA and college players such as Doug Christie, Nate Robinson, Terrence Williams, Kevin Porter Jr., and Dejounte Murray.Jamal led the Vikings to capture the 1998 Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) State Championship. How did we go from regular old college admissions to seven ‘early action’ applications and 11 personal essays? When I was in school, that’s what everyone did, and I graduated from college in 2009. The book tells the story of Anne, a 27-year-old application guru who coaches five high school seniors through the harrowing application process. Here are the institutions that were lucky enough to have them: Spencer — Georgetown University. If you’re a parent or a kid who has never done this before, it’s like figuring out in March that you have to learn how to file your taxes by April 15. It makes me emotional to say that. But it's also where author Lacy Crawford was sexually assaulted by two fellow students one night in October 1990. Indeed, the personal essay in particular causes students and parents to tear their hair out, knowing it could make or break their application. Have you heard from any of your peers, your classmates? The only way to speak to that kind of gossip was to tell what had happened to me, and I really didn't want to. And when I found out it wasn't going to be, I truly didn't feel I had a choice any longer. They’ve taken the expensive SAT prep courses, visited at least a dozen campuses, and spent weeks agonizing over their personal essays. Lacy Crawford, the author drew from her experience as a college admissions counselor to give us a view of the upper mclass and upper middle class vie for a place at an Ivy League college for their child. Application rates have soared and admissions rates have plummeted. So I panicked and called some schools and sent over applications. So I started writing the book as a private investigation. Drawing on her 15 years of experience counseling high school students with their college applications, she satirizes one six-month push for five high school seniors. No one bothered to tell you. It’s not terribly dissimilar to journalism. At this point in the summer, most high school juniors are already acquainted with the horrible agony that is the college admissions process. This is how it begins.” I’d been secretly judging these parents for ten years but there I was, ready to step on the same moving walkway, and I thought, “I know how this ends.” This ends with me hiring someone like me to get my kid into college. My fantasy is that it will be empowering—as much as I think “empower” is a terrible word. Those students go on to become luminaries - judges, authors, even secretaries of state. ‘Early Decision’ author Lacy Crawford breaks down the college admissions craziness for Lizzie Crocker. 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