The Golden Ticket

2024 CiBA SEA Short Awards 1st Place Winner 2024 IPPY Awards Silver Winner in Essay 2023 Sarton Awards Gilda Prize Winner 2023 Best Book Awards Winner in Nonfiction: Creative 2023 Best Book Awards Finalist in Best New Nonfiction and Parenting & Family 2023 Literary Titan Book Award Gold Winner“Irena Smith’s captivating and smart memoir … can serve as a potential antidote to the fevered belief that being admitted to an elite college will spell the difference between a successful life vs. a doomed future. That’s a fever that’s hard to break for many families, but Smith’s highly personal, literate, sometimes snarky account might just do the trick.” —Forbes “Regardless of what stage you’re at in your parenting experience, this book is the best book to read both about parenting and human-ing, and the more people who read it, the better our world will be.” —Kveller “The Golden Ticket is a compelling memoir that unapologetically delves into Irena’s journey. Her emotive storytelling and vivid descriptions forge a connection with readers… . an exceptional read for anyone seeking a glimpse into the world of a college admissions wizard. Delving into the intricacies of the application process, this engaging and informative book comes highly recommended for readers interested in both personal narratives and the college admissions landscape. —Literary Titan “Tackling childhood and parenting in a new way, The Golden Ticket shows that growing up in America is an increasingly difficult job. With humor and pathos, Irena Smith draws the reader behind the curtain of college admissions, where life is more complicated than any kid’s file.” —Malcolm Harris, author of Kids These Days and Palo Alto “At a time of an unprecedented youth mental health crisis, Irena Smith’s addictively engaging, literary, witty, and heartrending memoir couldn’t be more timely and important. Thank goodness she had the courage, smarts, and perfect perspective—at “the intersection of unbridled ambition and family dysfunction”—to create it.” —Katherine Ellison, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of books including Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention “Irena Smith has crafted a brilliant, hilarious, and keenly perceptive memoir that should be required reading for any parent—especially those Type-A among us who know exactly what child we’d like to order from the menu. College application essays and parental aspirations part like curtains to reveal the ever-daunting challenge of raising humans into adulthood.” —Sonya Huber, author of Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto “I started reading and couldn’t stop. Irena Smith has written a remarkable memoir of her life—painfully honest, touching, and marvelously funny, mixing wisdom about the madness of college admission today and her own family story.” —Jon Reider, coauthor of Admission Matters, former Stanford admission officer, and cofounder of SLE, Stanford’s freshman humanities program “… the writing throughout The Golden Ticket is remarkably strong and makes for a highly enjoyable read. The narration is erudite and entertaining; the author’s skill and devotion to craft are apparent from the first page to the last.” —The BookLife Prize

Irena Smith is a college admissions expert and the author of the award-winning memoir The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays. Born in Soviet Russia and raised in the United States, she weaves her experiences of migration, generational expectations, motherhood, and memory into her writing. Irena lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, a rotating cast of children, and two cats who are working on resolving their differences.