Having finished her course work early, Anna spent her last quarter at Stanford studying for her GMAT. But she worried about her finals from the previous quarter: "I really wanted to end with a bang, you know? Then I checked my grades and they were really great ... two A-pluses and an A." When asked to give her college a grade, she doesn't hesitate to reciprocate praise, giving Stanford an A. She can't imagine having gone anywhere else.

Parham turned down Berkeley to attend UCLA, opting to live at home after his first year. His family lives in a two-story house in Brentwood, "where OJ used to live," he reminds. "I don't have to worry about cooking my own food or laundry," he says, quickly adding, "maybe I shouldn't talk so loud so my mom doesn't hear me."

Majoring in cybernetics--which merges his interests in biology, engineering and computer science--Parham studies hard. One time, after finishing a physics problem set, he let loose with a howl the whole library could hear. "But I've never done

anything really crazy or wild," he maintains.

But, as Anna remembers, Parham's family hosted the high school's big, post-graduation party. "It was really funny because his parents are very conservative and kinda strict," Anna says. The Yashars hired security guards to keep out unwanted guests and those invited brought sleeping bags for the all-night event. "I guess people hooked up but it wasn't like debauchery. It was a fun party."

Parham still has a taste for nightlife, and he finds time in his UCLA schedule to head into the city. He likes the after-hours scene at the Palace, where they serve up great trance music and apple martinis--his favorites.

Of the four, Anna remembers Mira--not Maya--as the most Harvard-enchanted. "She was the most fanatical about it, I think. She was just very stressed out about the whole process. She went to one of those private college counselors. And she went out and bought a suit for her interview," Anna says. "I thought she was kind of intense."

Susan Kim, a counselor at Van Nuys, says Mira's parents were also "really, really enthusiastic about higher education, about an Ivy League education." While her older sister chose Berkeley, Mira picked Columbia and took courses like "The American Radical Tradition" with famed U.S. historian and author Eric Foner.