Ivies," "safeties," "AP prep courses," "legacy," "résumé-enhancing activity," "nonbinding early acceptance," "rolling admissions," "single-choice early action." If this argot is familiar to you, poor you: You have a child in high school, and these are the days that try your soul, the spring days when many college admissions are announced, often by e-mail, which is how AP Harry learned he was deferred by Harvard.

Harry is a character in Susan Coll's new novel "Acceptance," set in Verona County, Md., which is the real Montgomery County, Md., thinly disguised—rich, liberal, full of strivers and contiguous to strivers' paradise, Washington. Harry earned the nickname AP because beginning with his freshman year he took almost every Advanced Placement course offered at Verona High School, which is so serious about placing graduates in prestigious colleges that the principal stalks the halls quizzing students on vocabulary words. For Harry, only Harvard will do.

But Harry is a white male without a legacy at Harvard, and although he got a perfect 800 on his math SAT, even with the help of private SAT prep tutoring he could boost his critical reading score only to 720. And when he got a B in an AP English course, he worried that it was the beginning of a long slide that would terminate on some skid row or, worse, at a "safety" school not among the Ivies.

Harry, who wears starched shirts and a blazer and carries a briefcase, is a real rara avis in Verona County—a conservative whose heroes include Trent Lott. And he is a wee bit obsessive. He has his mother quiz him to confirm that he remembers the U.S. News & World Report's list—in order—of the top 50 liberal-arts colleges. He subscribes to a service that each day sends an SAT-type question to his cell phone. Harry taps his phone keyboard and reads:

" 'Their ideal was to combine individual liberty with material equality, a goal that has not yet been realized and that may be as [blank] as transmutation of lead into gold.' "

"Before Harry could continue, a small girl wearing orthodontic headgear blurted out the answer: 'A, chimerical'."