“We regret to inform you…” is the phrase that haunts seniors’ nightmares during the college admissions process. After all of the hard work that they put in over the course of their high school careers – trying to balance sports, good grades, challenging classes, and leadership positions in clubs – it is terrifying to consider that it may not end up bringing them the result they hope for. It’s even more intimidating to consider that they might be rejected from not only their dream school, but from everywhere.
This is the nightmare that Mischa Abramavicius faces in We Regret to Inform You, Ariel Kaplan’s sophomore young adult novel. After spending her entire four years of high school “overachieving” in numerous clubs and difficult courses, she discovers that she was not only rejected from Princeton and Harvard, but also every “target” and “safety” school that she applied to. Devastated by this dramatic turn of events, she employs the help of her best friend Nate and the mysterious “Ophelia Syndicate” to investigate a potential hack into her transcript, uncovering shocking information about their school community in the process.
The novel is fast-paced, with an interesting plot. There is a lull in the middle, but once the action picks back up again towards the end, We Regret to Inform You becomes difficult to put down. It is, however, a deeply flawed book.
Despite the author’s best intentions, We Regret to Inform You comes across as a bit out-of-touch. In an interview with the National Book Review, Kaplan stated that her goal with We Regret to Inform You was to communicate to high school students “that getting those acceptance (or rejection) letters isn’t the end of the story.” However, this sentiment is conveyed in a manner that is at best shaky. When her peers find out that Mischa has been rejected from all of the “reach” and “target” schools that she applied to, they assume that this means she is going to Paul Revere University, a fictitious school with a notoriously high acceptance rate close to Mischa’s home. Mischa is too embarrassed by the truth that she did not get in there either to correct these rumors, so all of the characters not involved in her investigation take it as a fact that she is going to Revere. Her peers repeatedly mock her for this decision, claiming how unworthy she was of Ivy League schools. Mischa never externally or internally corrects them. The characters that try to support Mischa are also still obviously reluctant to do so, all of them repeating the same empty praise that Revere “has good internships.” Throughout the entirety of We Regret to Inform You, Revere remains a cursed subject. For an audience of students either fearing or coping with rejections to top schools, this depiction of a safety school is far from comforting. Kaplan admitted that “Mischa’s much more type-A than [she] ever was” in an interview with the National Book Review, and that lack of a connection to this experience unfortunately shines through in this aspect of the novel.
Additionally, although Mischa, who narrates the novel with first-person point of view, claims to have an advanced vocabulary, the writing style does not reflect this. It is at times cliched or bland: the quote “I pulled the glop out of the refrigerator. I pulled the tinfoil off of the bowl. I pulled out my phone and took a picture, then texted it to Nate” is a prime example of this. Or: “Maybe it’s the quacking. It’s a nice noise for an animal to make, quacking. Quack. Quack. It’s a good sound.”
At the end of the day, We Regret to Inform You is an interesting and fun novel to read for entertainment, but fails to stand as an “overachiever’s guide to college rejection” (as it is advertised on the front cover). It is not recommended for high school students in a similar situation as Mischa or those that fear it because it does nothing to ease such tension.
