( CNN ) -- Just when many colleges have started sending out their acceptances , director Paul Weitz 's `` Admission , '' a comedy set in a fictionalized Princeton University admissions office , has debuted in movie theaters across the country . The film is off to a so-so start at the box office , but its timing could not be better for drawing in high school seniors and their parents . Tina Fey , in the role of Portia Nathan , an admissions officer with a screwball love life , gives us a lot to laugh at in `` Admission , '' but as a college professor who has served on his school 's admissions committee , I found myself doing more squirming than laughing as I watched the film . What had me squirming was the focus of `` Admission , '' Portia 's efforts to gain entry into Princeton for Jeremiah Balakian , a brilliant student , who was a screwup at his local New Hampshire high school but who has found himself at Quest , a nearby progressive , prep school . Jeremiah is the classic diamond in the rough . He has gotten fives on all his advanced placement tests , despite never having taken an AP course , and he is near 800 ( the top score ) on his College Boards . But Portia , whose motives for helping Jeremiah are personal and professional , can not convince her fellow admissions officers that Jeremiah is right for Princeton . After they vote to reject him , she takes matters into her own hands . In the middle of the night , she sneaks into the Princeton admissions office and changes Jeremiah 's folder from deny to accept . The result is a blessing for Jeremiah but the end of Portia 's career in college admissions . What worried me -- and will , I assume , worry high school students and their parents -- is the film 's implication that the only way a diamond in the rough gets into a college such as Princeton is through an admissions officer willing to sacrifice her best interests . My Harvard undergraduate experience , as well as my current Sarah Lawrence experience , tells me that admissions officers are a lot smarter than `` Admission '' suggests . The admission officers I know find it easy to advocate for the student with great grades or the 220-pound halfback who likes physics or the cellist who has played in the local symphony , but their eureka moment comes in discovering the promising student everyone else has ignored . Still , I take the larger point of `` Admission '' -- namely , these days getting into a prestigious college has become a blood sport . As Portia tells herself in the Jean Hanff Korelitz novel on which `` Admission '' is based , `` The system as far as she was concerned was not about the applicant at all . It was about the institution . It was about delivering to the trustees , and to a lesser extent the faculty , a United Nations of scholars , an Olympiad of athletes , a conservatory of artists and musicians , a Great Society of strivers . '' Colleges want students who will enhance their ratings and their brand , which means many worthy applicants get left behind . At the country 's most selective colleges and universities , only 3 percent of the students come from the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder . Even worse , at all too many high schools , it is hard for aspiring students to get help on their college applications . A 2010 Public Agenda study found that across the nation the ratio of high school students to guidance counselors was 460 to 1 . What are good students and their parents supposed to do then ? Here `` Admission '' provides no checklist of answers , but its satire on the workings of a fictionalized Princeton ( last year the real Princeton took in just 2,095 of the 26,664 who applied ) , provides solid , commonsense advice . `` Admission '' tells students and their parents that although the Princetons of America offer a great education , those who obsess over gaining admission to them are , in most cases , headed for disappointment . They are letting themselves play a game in which there are certain to be more losers than winners . Equally important , `` Admission '' asserts that landing a spot in a prestigious college ( Portia is a Dartmouth graduate ) does not guarantee a happy post-college life . Indeed , if there is an overriding message in `` Admission , '' it is : Do n't lose perspective . The one truly shallow moment in the film comes when the director of Princeton admissions complains to his staff that U.S. News & World Report has lowered Princeton to No . 2 in its rankings . The director is deeply upset by the downgrade . He believes , as all too many parents and their children do in real life , that the quality of an education can be measured like a baseball batting average or the carats in a diamond ring . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Nicolaus Mills .
Nicolaus Mills : New film starring Tina Fey exaggerates the plight of college admissions staff . He says admissions officers do n't have to go to extraordinary lengths to admit unusual applicant . Comment: Mills : Landing a spot in a prestigious college does n't guarantee happiness in life .