Ten years after the epilogue of The Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg took place life still moves on. The Class of 2004, as featured in this book, began their college careers just as the Class of 2017 began school for the first time. Now that the Class of ‘17 has finally caught up, I felt it necessary to revisit our old friends from Steinberg’s acclaimed novel. 

For the sake of time (and my patience) here’s the summary of each student from Wikipedia: 

• Julianna Bentes

A gifted multiracial student and dancer from the prestigious Harvard-Westlake School weighing scholarship offers from several elite institutions; attends Yale University

• Migizi Pensoneau

A Native American who overcomes a rough background and a checkered transcript to succeed in a preparatory school; attends Wesleyan University

• Jordan Goldman

An ambitious writer from Staten Island; attends Wesleyan University; later attends Oxford University; and creates a series of best-selling college guidebooks, Students’ Guide to Colleges, fromPenguin Books, as well as Unigo – a free online college resource guide

• Becca Jannol

A talented student from Southern California who confessed to accepting a pot brownie as a sophomore and writes her college essay on her experience; attends Cornell University; wait-listed by Wesleyan

• Aggie Ramirez

A Dominican and natural leader from an impoverished neighborhood in New York City whose grades suffer from being stretched too thin; attends Muhlenberg College; rejected by Wesleyan

• Tiffany Wang

An Asian American and National Merit Scholar struggling to live up to her father’s high expectations; attends New York University; waitlisted by Wesleyan 


So here’s what I could dig up on some of them.

Julianna Bentes 

Julianna  went on to get her J.D. from Yale Law School.

She’s the girl in the middle/back. And here’s an ARTICLE from her back in 2001 about financial aid at Yale (in which she references some of her experiences that are mentioned in The Gatekeepers).

Migizi Pensoneau  

(Mig for short) 

was selected as a 2005 Disney-ABC Writing Fellow, after which he was staffed on the TV show, “Alias.”

He’s been doing a number of shorts as well in the last four years. 

A TRAILER for on of his shorts 

AND he has an IMDb page 

which makes me want to fangirl profusely, it’s like the time I realized Josh Gad went on to be a professional actor in both movies and on Broadway

Jordan Goldman 

incase you didn’t see my post the other day, has a Wikipedia entry:

an American entrepreneur working in the internet and education industries, best known as the founder andCEO of Unigo.^[1] Goldman has been named “One of the Top 30 Young Entrepreneurs in America” by Inc. Magazine,^[2], “One of the Top 100 Young Entrepreneurs in America” by the White House,^[3] and “One of the 100 Most Influential People in New York Business and Technology” by Silicon Alley Insider^[4].

This is one of those moments that proves in every profession, one needs writing skills in order to communicate. The power of communication can obviously open many doors…

Rebecca Jannol 

I think I found her. 

Rebecca Dena Jannol graduated from law school at Southwestern Univ School of Law and has an undergraduate degree from Cornell Univ. She was admitted to The State Bar of California on 12/1/2006. 

Source 

Tiffany Wang  

Guys, I found her on FB, instead of a public information website as was the case of everyone else, so I don’t feel comfortable sharing pictures of her b/c that’s an invasion of privacy. However, her profile matches up exactly with the girl from the book. So here’s what picture of her I can give you. 

She went on from NYU to the University of Michigan to get her own L.D. 

As far as I can tell, she moved back to Palo Alto (which is funny b/c in 2010 I visited the courthouse there) 

maybe I can show you her awesome profile picture that’s public to everyone on fb?   

Aggie Ramirez 

Guys, this is where my investigative reporting ended. I’m pretty sure I found her on fb too, but all I got was a profile pic that matches her description from the book.

And MAYBE a lead that she’s an elementary school teacher

Soooooo sorry

I was on a roll though!!!

Oh, and Ralph is still working at Albuquerque Academy. One of my college counselor does know him, though. So that’s cool! Right?

Well I think it’s cool at least 

So that’s everything, and I think I got all of my fangirling out of the way.

As you can see though, everyone finds their path eventually, regardless of where they got their undergraduate education from.