A guest review from Teen Room Staff Brandon!
The prize: $25,000. The hack: Take one “deadbeat” senior and turn him into Harvard-acceptable material. This is the bet that Eric, Max, and Schwarz have taken with the notorious hackers, the Bongo Bums. Max, the risk-taker of the group, immediately agrees without the consent of his group-mates, and the bet is on. Eric, the voice of reason, immediately reprimands Max for his foolishness, but eventually decides he is in for the “hack.” Schwarz, a 16 year-old genius and freshman at Harvard, is easily persuaded, and goes along with both of them. The term “hack” takes on a different meaning in this book, one more akin to prank, but much more sophisticated.
The Bongo Bums choose, Clay Porter, school terror, as their candidate for Harvard. Max approaches him and offers a cut of the prize money if they pull the hack off. He agrees, and the hacking begins. The book follows the standard application process timeline of Harvard, from the application to the interview, to finally, acceptance. The story digresses nicely with several different storylines for each character, which of course are woven into one book.
The book is told from a third person point of view for the first portion, but then switches to first person when the crew meets Alexandra Talese, also a Harvard hopeful, who unfortunately happens to be working for the Bums, in exchange for them hacking the Harvard network and guaranteeing her acceptance. Several people who have read the book have found this to be confusing, but it wasn’t a problem for me at all. I believe Hacking Harvard was a very good novel that displays the corrupt system known as college admissions. But it is purely fiction, and must be taken with a very large grain of salt.
--Brandon
P.S. Do not attempt any of the hacking described in this book. You will probably end up in jail.
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