Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns is famous across Equestria as a center of academic excellence. Only the best and brightest unicorns are offered places, selected by their academic merit, magical ability and passion for study. To make the admissions process as fair and reliable as possible, all candidates are given three exams by different teams of examiners, who then meet in private to decide which students are most deserving of a place.
Winner of the December 2014 Writeoff competition: Behind Closed Doors.
Chapters (1)
She even got the bells right
Zomg what they are about to experience will scar them
And then they shit themselves
This deserved its win
Excellent story, and very well written. Pretty nice take on the concept.
Though I find that you're raising Twilight to extreme levels, even for her. From how the professors speak, it seems like she's a flawless genius who knows and can do things not even they have seen, which is rather unbelievable given that she's fresh out of magic kindergarten. Canon Twilight is still learning things and tends to mess up spells now and then (especially if a success would end the episode too early). This one seems to be fully taught already, so why would she even want to apply? If anything, she should ask for a teaching position.
Also, Scrum sounds like she's college-age more than anything. Then again, maybe her parents just push her that much - it happens in real life too.
Regardless, a good story all in all, and time spent well.
I enjoyed this one a lot. It was one of a few stories this month that made me smile all around.
Hee hee, ok yea Twilight comes off as a little overpowered even for her standards, though this is comedy, but those poor professors. Trying to stump her so hard and placing an impossible task before her that she will complete. Frankly there should be a slowly rising sense of dread in the teachers as Twilight completes all the exams they had ready, completes all the back up exams, completes last year's exams, and suggests security improvements. I would have brought in lead shielding for the final exam.
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I think it's because she IS that good! Their tests are all assumed to be possible for a foals of her age to do. Which means that it's all about control. When we see her mess up a spell, it's always in an unexpected situation and/or a new spell and/or she is surprised and had no prep time... correct me if I'm wrong... All the things the examiners ask of her, she already knows.
What's surprising to the examiners is that she demonstrates an ability at the tests that they have never seen in a filly, except for Sunset Shimmer. Ask one of them to do the tests, and they will do it as well as Filly Twilight, because they are adults. With age comes experience, power and control.
What Filly Twilight has, is ALOT of control, a lot of spell experience and really good memory, and also Cadence's help, but Cadence doesn't account for that much of the testing ability, she's a babysitter, not a tutor, and only teaches Twilight magic, because that's what Twilight wants. Cadence is not in it for the money or approval from the parents. If the parents were trying to push one of her charges into magic, or something, Cadence would try her hardest to fix the family situation, not force the kid into something they don't want to do.
What Filly Twilight doesn't have is a lot of easily accessible power. That's what the egg is for. It's a test of power, which is the only thing they don't test for, because foals don't have as much power as fully grown ponies, and as shown, they're using it because they've run out of all available testing materials.
Well, there was redundancy in those paragraph... I think... but I hope I emphasized why I think that Twilight's results make sense in this story... I hope I was polite...
I'll say it again: it was an honor to lose to this one.
Didn't seem like it changed all that much after the writeoff (though I do note the reordering of the early sections), but then, it didn't need to.
It is a good thing that she turned her parents into potted plants instead of the professors or they would reject her:
¡I figuratively laughed off mine head at that line!
I love this.
Keep up the good work!
Oh, that was a joy. Congratulations once again! You deserve it.
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Maybe I exaggerate Twilight's abilities just a little.
But I expect a few teachers and tutors will relate to the situation. You always have a few tricky problems up your sleeve just in case a bright student gets through everything you set them... But very occasionally, some exceptional student gets through all of them too... That's good, of course, but - what do you do next?
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Note to children: if you must turn someone into a potted plant, don't pick your teachers
Wait, so Trixie is older than Twilight?
Okay, now I just want to see the aftermath too...
This is a wonderfully done story, and a flawless explanation for Twilight's exam. Bravo.
Headcanon accepted
I've always believed Twilight was ranked at a ten only because the exponential scale stopped at ten. Her evaluators at school tended to rank her somewhere between twelve and let’s go get a drink, I’m buying.
Nice short story
Those poor ponies.
Be careful what you wish for!
Okay, this was a hilariously awesome story. Any chance of a follow up where the professors meet up to discuss - possibly over drinks - after the exam in question?
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Given what we know it makes sense.
We do know that Trixie attended CSGU, (word of Faust), and we also know that she has since had time to establish herself as an entertainer. The latter implies that she attended before Twilight did, even if only by a few years.
5409274 I second this.
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I guess. It's just that it's really hard to tell age differences with ponies. The only real tells is they either have grey in their mane (unless grey is their natural color) or have a lot of wrinkles (like Granny Smith).
You have to continue this. Show the aftermath of Twilight's exam, that she was taken in by Celestia herself, and how the teachers handle the rest of the students they were evaluating at the time. There is WAY too much potential here to just end it as a less than 3000 word one-shot.
5409274 As someone already seconded this, I third it.
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And Twilight knows that! That's why she tried it out on her parents instead~
vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/0/07/Twilight_turns_her_parents_into_plants_cropped_S1E23.png/revision/latest?cb=20120214080954
They're much more forgiving of silly mistakes like that.
Would love to see this continued somehow, if you ever consider writing a school fic, I'll totally be there!
You definetly need to put this into the "Badass Twilight"-group. It definetly fits and would mix those stories a bit up.
Oh and by the way, so far I have read more than 10 different explanations, why Twilight would have to hatch a dragon in her exam (given that there propably aren't enough dragon eggs arround for all the students)
Your theory is by far the best! Congrats!
mucho bueno
And then they got turned into plants, and gave her a place in the school anyway.
*Grins* Very nice.
5409274 I tots agree. Given the quality, premise and general execution of the story, follow up is a must.
5409765 You don't turn away someone who can turn you into something other ponies will inadvertently eat!
*Psycho Twilight smiles at a teacher who's thinking of giving her a B+* Ever wonder what being a hayburger would feel like?
images.wikia.com/mlpfanart/images/8/8c/Crazy_Twilight_Sparkle_and_Pinkamena_Diane_Pie_by_artist-johnjoseco.png
Nobody picks a fight with the crazies!
"She even got the bells right."
I loved this!!
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Rather. It might be interesting to see the aftermath.
5410326 You know, that picture is really true.
Pinkamena may be psycho, and be kinda stab-happy, but Twilight when she's late?
Bat-shit fucking crazy.
I wrote a review of this story here.
Not surprised this one got featured. Brilliant!
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Ditto on all of them and more.
Please give this a sequel!!!!
I really want to see the teacher's reaction to this and how they explain the whole thing to Celestia.
By doing the impossible test, they lost the honor of being her tutor -- that went to Celestia.
I wonder who was 88 on the written and 9 for the first two tests... That pony is probably one to be reckoned with.
I always like stories that give some theoretical insight; especially when done well.
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do you remember the title of the fic (there may be more than one) where hatching the egg was a standard test nopony was supposed to do? I never bookmarked it, and have regretted it since.
Haven't read something like this before. I love it.
Twilight's parents must get frustrated as all hell, though. "No, Twilight, only succeeding at 95% of the university exam practicals they dredged up for you does not mean they want to throw you out of the school by your horn."
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Fancy seeing you here! I've read that story too, and I think I favorited it, but I'd have to get back to you on actually finding it.
This... I'm not entirely certain what to make of this. It's a decent enough story, sure. Feature box, eh, okay. Barely. Hitting the top ten? Why?
When I read through this, nothing really stood out. Literally the only line I found to be rather funny is the bells one. The story seems to be told in a rather passive voice, which leads it to seem like nothing is happening. What doesn't help is that nothing really is happening. There's not really a problem or a climax or anything like that. No, the dragon egg problem doesn't count, as that took about a hundred words.
The professors seemed likable enough, along with the headcanon cannonball this was. But nothing stands out about this story to me. It just exists, nothing super special, but decently written. The writing itself isn't really standout-ish. I'm already forgetting some of what happened. It was mostly a conglomeration of events that were tied together by the exams, with only the professors meeting actually providing any consistency and interest. Had the meeting been expanded upon, it could have been better. Mostly because that's where all the hunor and interaction (and headcanon!) was. But in a fic so short as this with this topic, nothing really happens. It could just be a glorified blog post (with a bit of polishing) talking about an author's headcanon of the subject.
I'm not quite sure why this turned out as popular as it did, but kudos to the ecstatic author regardless. No like from me, but I see no reason to explicitly dislike either.
Sounds about right