You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
Devi Vishwakumar, played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, is the main character of Never Have I Ever.
Netflix
Early in the fourth, and final, season of Never Have I Ever, a Netflix hit, Devi sets out as a senior to earn a college recommendation letter from Dr. Keyes.
Keyes prides herself on writing the best teacher recommendation letters, and she writes only two a year. She handwrites them. Her knowledge of students and the colleges they want to go to is exceptional. Generally, a letter of recommendation from Keyes (along with great grades, SAT scores, etc.) gets students in.
Devi, the star of the show, has her goal for college: Princeton University. She wants the Keyes recommendation. And Keyes tells her she is a strong candidate.
But then everything goes wrong. Devi is fighting with Ben and Margot, two other students, and their argument (which involves sex) is heard by Keyes, who promptly collapses (literally), and Devi will no longer be a candidate for the recommendation letter.
Most of the extensive discussion in the press of Never Have I Ever focuses on the show’s portrayal of teen sex and relationships, or of Devi (daughter of Indians who immigrated to California) for its portrayal of Tamil culture. There is also a debate about the main Jewish character and how accurate he is.
But the show’s final season is very much about getting into college.
College admissions has been a frequent topic for popular culture, with actual admissions professionals having mixed reactions to the results.
In 2013, the film Admission (set at Princeton) portrayed the university as woefully behind the times when it came to technology, with applicant records kept in folders (orange, of course). Admission or rejection is accompanied by a dramatic checking of a box (or in one case, where an admissions officer is angry at an applicant’s false claim, stamping the rejection twice on the folder). Princeton’s admissions dean is traumatized by a drop from No. 1 to No. 2 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Princeton admissions was also portrayed, not necessarily in a way the university would value, in the 1983 hit Risky Business.
Jim Jump, a high school counselor who writes columns for Inside Higher Ed on admissions, in 2018 was prompted by an episode of Madam Secretary to write, “Hollywood’s depiction of the college admissions process almost always promotes the myth of prestige, the idea that one has to go to an ‘elite’ college. Just once could we have a teenager from a network drama attend the College of Wooster or Montana State or the University of Scranton?”
We won’t tell you if Devi achieves her goal of getting into Princeton, as many of the show’s fans are still working their way through the 10 episodes (but if you watch, you’ll find out). Another character ends up at Howard University. A third regroups from a disastrous audition for the theater program at the Juilliard School. Another character is a year older and back at his high school after dropping out of Arizona State University.
The show gives an inflated sense of the importance of college fairs, which have been subject to some criticism, particularly since the pandemic. The portrayal of college fairs is not as a place to find out about more institutions one might attend (a good use), but as a place where a student’s encounter with a representative from a college could result in being rejected.
The depiction of trips to college is probably also not completely accurate. The students travel to New York City (on a trip sponsored, but not paid for, by their high school). For a high school in a nice suburb, the timing of the trip (during their senior year) is later than most students (of their socioeconomic class) would go. And most students would likely go alone (or with parents) for a trip on which they were doing interviews.
Where the show rings true is in the discussions of binding early decision, nonbinding early action and regular decision. The show features explanations of the terms and also real examples—a student is accepted to college early action but ends up at another college.
The show also features scenes about the relationship between parents and children during the college admissions process. One parent successfully pressures her daughter to apply to a prestigious college that she doesn’t want to attend. Another parent has been more laissez-faire about the process and then discovers that her daughter has applied only to the eight Ivy League colleges.
This mother, however, gets over her anger (at that and many other indignities her daughter has put her through). She talks honestly about the way college admissions is a fluke, at least at the most competitive colleges, and about the importance of finding a good place regardless of the prestige involved. A worthy lesson.
