Those of you who haven’t yet gone through the college admissions process will think that my novel, GETTING IN, surely exaggerates how crazy things get. Those of you who have survived to tell the tale know the truth – which is that everything I wrote about could easily have happened, and in fact may have to someone you know. I’ve spent most of my life writing non-fiction, and at first I thought about doing it again this time – writing an irreverent parents’ guide to surviving college admissions with your sense of humor and perspective intact. But the world hardly needs another guide book. And besides, to me the family stories were far more interesting than the question of where a particular kid happened to get accepted or get turned down. I made up funny subtitles for a novel, to get myself in the right frame of mind: A Comedy of Bad Manners, or A Novel of Desire, because the way we behave seemed a far richer subject than the process itself. I found myself rereading Edith Wharton, Jane Austen, Dawn Powell, and thinking about family and ambition and dreams and competition. I began to look at college as yet…