33 true stories of parents,
students and college admissions
TheAdmissionDiaries
Lessons from India’s leading career counsellor
By the last page, you will know how families actually get into dream colleges — how a student finds the right major, builds a story admissions officers remember, and wins the offer. And how a parent helps without pushing, plans the money without panic, and lets go without losing their child.
Because college admissions is rarely only about college admissions.
Coming
January 2027
from Juggernaut
The cover · the launch date · an early excerpt — to your inbox first.
Every family stands at this signpost. This book is the map.
What this book will do for you
If you are a student —
- ✓Find the major you actually want — not the one that wins dinner-table arguments — and back it with conviction.
- ✓See how real students built applications that admissions officers remembered — including ones who got in against the odds.
- ✓Learn what to say in the hardest conversations with your parents — about money, about pressure, about your plan.
- ✓Finish with a step-by-step roadmap from your first serious college conversation to your first semester away.
If you are a parent —
- ✓Know when to intervene and when to let go — from families who got it wrong before they got it right.
- ✓Handle the money conversation honestly — what it costs, what it’s worth, and how to say it out loud.
- ✓Avoid the mistakes loving families make: worrying too much, pushing too hard, deciding for the wrong reasons.
- ✓Help your child win the admission — while raising an adult, not just an applicant.
Every chapter ends with the lessons of the story you have just read. The stories earn the advice.
Why I wrote this book
For twenty-seven years, I have sat in an unusual place: between parents and their children, while a family decides where a child will study, what it will cost, and who that child is allowed to become.
In that room I learned that admissions can be fear dressed up as advice. Status dressed up as opportunity. Freedom dressed up as a university application.
A father who says almost nothing because he does not know how to tell his child what the family can afford. A mother who knows something her son has not yet found the courage to tell her. A seventeen-year-old trying to explain a future they can feel but cannot yet describe.
I wrote The Admission Diaries because those conversations deserved to become more than case files — a father quietly saving for years; a boy who takes the train to save a few thousand rupees; a student who chooses the university nobody around him understands and builds a life nobody expected.
The admissions are the plot. Growing up — and letting go — is the story.
Not another “how to get in” book
Tests change. Policies change. Visa rules change. But a frightened parent is still a frightened parent, and a teenager wanting independence is still a teenager wanting independence.
That is why this book begins with people, not formulas — and it is still practical.
You will learn about admissions. But first, you will understand what admissions does to families.
Three thoughts from the book
“If nobody was watching — no relatives, no neighbours — what would you want your life to look like in ten years?”
“The university matters. The child matters more. Build the process in that order.”
“Prestige is a tiebreaker, not a strategy.”
Be the first to know
The cover. The launch date. An early excerpt.
Straight to your inbox before the book is released.