“May I have your attention everypony,” said Professor Crystal Clear, Chairpony of the Board of Examiners at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. “The schedule for the final round of admissions tests has now been posted on the notice board. Please note the time and room number for your exam and make sure that you are at the classroom five minutes before the start time. We would like to remind parents that while you may be present during your child’s exam, you must keep quiet for the full duration.”
The professor stood in front of a crowd of ponies on the blue tiled floor of the school foyer. It was Admissions Day, an important date in the school calendar, when all of the hopeful fillies and colts who had passed the written test in theoretical magic were invited to the school where the examination panel would assess their practical magic skills and decide who should receive an offer of a place. The school entrance was now full of nervous little foals, accompanied by their equally nervous parents.
Having delivered this short speech, the professor turned to leave, levitating her clip board and notes before her. But she did not get far before she was stopped by a pale green mare with a heavily styled mane and wearing a tailored dress.
“Professor! When will my daughter learn of the panel’s decision?”
“We will send the decision letters early next week. After we have seen all candidates, the examiners will meet to discuss their performance in all three practical exams, as well as their written test result, before making a final decision.” It was the school policy that each candidate was given three examinations by different panels of professional examiners to help make the process as fair as possible.
“And will you consider that my daughter is the captain of her preschool magical sports team and she has received a Gold Prince Blueblood Award, and…”
“The panel will consider all the information which is relevant to judging a candidate’s aptitude for advanced magical studies.”
Before the mare could ask any further questions, the professor walked away towards the school staffroom with a stern expression, paying no attention to all the ponies staring at her. She reached the door and disappeared into this private refuge. The parents and foals all fell silent for a moment before the crowd broke up into small groups.
“I know I messed up that last one,” said a little lavender filly with tearful eyes and an untidy indigo, pink and purple mane. “I never thought they would ask me to do a four dimensional metamorphosis. Cadance never said anything about that. And when they asked about the fundamental interactions between unicorn magic and earth spirits, I could only think of five… I know there are more than that… And…”
“Twilight,” said her mother. “You were able to do everything they asked you to. I'm sure you did very well.”
“But I didn't do it properly,” said Twilight Sparkle, skim-reading the notes on a set of flashcards orbiting around her head in a pink aura. “And the next test is the final one where they'll ask me something really hard. I've got to get this one right. I need to read some more on the practical limits of infinite incantations.”
She levitated a textbook out of her saddle bag and began flipping through the pages.
“Twilight,” said her mother. “There's a lovely café just across the road. We have half an hour until your final exam. Let's go and get an ice-cream.”
“I can't. I gotta learn this.”
“You can't learn much in thirty minutes,” said her father. “It's better that you try to relax.” With parental authority the two adult ponies led little Twilight out of the school doors.
On the other side of the foyer an ivory unicorn filly with a curly pink mane was sobbing uncontrollably while her parents tried to comfort her. “I-I couldn't do anything… They-they asked me to arrange the sticks as an octahedron, but I couldn't remember what that was and my mind just went blank. Then they just asked if I could levitate the sticks, and I should have been able to do it, but I just f-froze up…”
“It's okay Twinkleshine,” said her mother. “It's not the end of the world if you don't get a place. There are lots of other good schools.”
“B-but I really really want to come here. It looks so nice, and I'm sure I'll make friends here.”
Meanwhile in the center of the room, a blue-green filly with a blond mane was confidently spinning an oval hoofball on the tip of her horn.
“I totally aced that one. They'll offer me a place for sure. They'd be mad not to. They'll want a pro like me on the school team.”
She fired the ball at the wall with a high power levitation, then caught it as it bounced off at an angle.
“Hey—catch!” She threw the ball towards Twinkleshine, who froze, staring at the projectile, which hit her in the face. She burst into tears. Twinkleshine’s father gave her a comforting hug while her mother focused a stare of icy hatred towards the aggressor, but decided, with some restraint, not to create a scene. Her elegantly dressed mother—the mare who had earlier approached the professor—and father stood to one side pretending not to notice.
“You certainly should get an offer Sapphire Scrum,” said her mother. “After all the bits we paid that magic kindergarten for extra tuition.”
“'Course I might not accept it,” said her daughter, spinning the ball again. “This seems a bit of an egghead school. Dunno if I want to come here really.”
“You will accept an offer,” insisted her mother. “Even if you are not interested in studying, being a student at Princess Celestia's school will open a lot of doors.”
Inside the school staffroom, Professor Crystal Clear yawned. It had been a long day, and they still had a final set of candidates to see before they could go for dinner. Still, she reminded herself, it was worth it. The job of teaching was a lot easier if you picked the right students to start with. Unfortunately no examination process was perfect, and all the teachers were well aware that every year they would make mistakes. Bright foals would crack under the pressure and miss out on a place. And worse, they would sometimes admit overconfident fillies or colts who did not deserve it and were a real pain to teach. The faculty had not forgotten the consequences of admitting Miss Lulamoon a few years ago. Hence the three-exam system, which made it as reliable as possible in the restricted time.
They had a fifteen minute break before they had to get back to examining. The professor sat down on the plush cushions, poured herself a cup of tea from a large blue-and-white teapot, added a drop of milk, and took a few cookies from a plate. Around her, the staff were comparing notes. At this point in the day it was clear who the front-runners and no-hopers were, but the last few places were still an open question.
Her colleague Professor Arpeggio was reading the notes of another member of the examination board. “You gave her a ten! Seriously? You're not inflating your marks are you?” he said.
“Wait 'til you see her. Ha, I see you didn't think much of Miss Scrum either,” Professor Empirical Logic replied.
“You gave her a four—that seems generous.”
“She was okay at levitation but she couldn't spell her own name, let alone cast any serious enchantment. It was clear after five minutes that she didn't have a snowball's chance in Tartarus of getting a place, so we just let her talk about Canterlot rules hoofball for the rest of her time.”
“What did she get in the written test?”
“Seventy-one. But that's not a surprise. She went to that prep school where they cram them with the answers to every past paper for the last five years.”
Crystal Clear stared over Empirical Logic's withers and read her notes. “You only gave Miss Twinkleshine a three—what went wrong?” she asked.
“We couldn't get anything out of her. She burst into tears after a few minutes and never recovered.”
“She was probably just nervous. Liberal Art and Square Cap seemed to like her. They gave her a seven.”
The elderly professor at another table, on hearing his name, called across, “Yes, she showed us a lovely demonstration of the florentibus cristallum charm. She got the colors almost perfect. It would be a real shame if we can’t offer her a place.”
“And what did she get on the test?” asked Professor Logic.
“Sixty-eight percent—not bad,” said Arpeggio. “Let's see what Rhetoric and Apple Polish make of her. I'd say she's still in the running.”
Professor Clear pushed her glasses further up her muzzle and sipped her tea. “Are there anymore we need to discuss? Any other big discrepancies in the scores?”
The unicorns all levitated their papers in the air in front of them and scanned the tables of marks.
“I see you gave Mr Sky Blue a five,” said Liberal Art. “We also found him a little lackluster. For all his enthusiastic talk about being inspired to study magic after watching Princess Celestia raise the sun—don't they all say that?—he struggled to perform the most basic levitation. I think we can dismiss him. The ranking of the others is pretty clear now.”
“We need to tell you something about Twilight Sparkle,” said Professor Square Cap.
“Miss Sparkle?” said Crystal Clear. “What is there to discuss? She's through. She got a hundred percent on the written examination—nopony's done that since Sunset Shimmer. We said yesterday that with a score like that she would have to turn the examiner into a potted plant or something to not get a place. And, let's see, you gave her a ten didn't you?”
“That's not what I meant. The problem is you can't give her any of the standard exercises in her final test. We got through them all in the first exam.”
“What all of them? Even the tesseract transfiguration?”
“She'd configured the full family of magical hypercubic figures before we had finished asking the question,” said Square Cap.
“And the illusion projection?”
“She produced a full size image of Starswirl the Bearded in the air in front of us. In color, with all the details. She even got the bells right.”
Professor Clear sucked in a breath. Most new students could barely manage to produce a likeness of a simple shape.
“What about the reserve exercises?”
Professor Rhetoric spoke up. “We got through those halfway through her second exam. We then had to search through our old notes to find something from last year which hadn't been reused. After that we had to improvise. I looked around the room searching for ideas and my eyes fell on the door, so I asked her how she would go about cracking a magical lock. In two minutes she had deciphered the encryption spell and gave us a list of suggestions on possible improvements to school security.”
The professors turned to the door with a worried look. Could a candidate have sneaked into the staff room?
“And I must say, she was also extremely polite, modest about her abilities, and altogether a very sweet little filly.”
“But what are we going to do?” said Arpeggio. “We don't have time to think up some new problems.”
“We could just tell her she's got a place and doesn't need to go through a third test,” suggested Empirical Logic.
“We can't do that. That would be totally unprofessional,” said Crystal Clear.
“Well then, we just need to set her something really difficult,” said Arpeggio.
“That's what we've been doing,” replied several of the professors in unison. “She just throws back perfect answers to everything.”
Professor Logic pondered the problem. “Maybe we could ask her what question she would ask herself in an examination.”
Crystal Clear pointed out the flaw in this idea. “She might think of something which we can’t do.”
“What if we set her something impossible? Tell her to raise the moon, or predict the future or turn herself into an alicorn or something.”
“But she would know that she can't do that,” said Arpeggio. “I'd rather not see another filly in tears today. It has to be something that she doesn't know is impossible.”
“I've got it!”
Professor Apple Polish turned her head and focused her magic on a cabinet at the end of the room, which contained a selection of ornamental curiosities. She levitated a large oval object, covered with purple spots, over to the coffee table. It was an ancient dragon egg recovered from an archaeological dig some years before.
“What's the game? She has to guess what it is?” asked Empirical Logic.
“I thought we could ask her to hatch it.”
The examiners all fell about laughing.
“That's perfect,” said Professor Clear. “She won't know how old it is. She'll try to hatch it using spells for birds’ eggs, or maybe a power fracture incantation, or who knows what? It will be interesting to see what she tries. I guess it is even theoretically possible to hatch it—not very likely given its age—but there's no way a single pony could generate the magical energy to activate it. That's brilliant.”
She cleared a tea trolley of cups and plates then placed the egg in the center. Meanwhile Apple Polish took a piece of paper and crayons and drew a simple sketch to show a little dragon inside a broken egg. She stuck this onto the side of the trolley.
“Okay everypony,” she said, getting to her hooves, adjusting her glasses and clipping fresh sheets of paper onto her clipboard. “Remember—professionalism—we can't show Miss Sparkle any sign of our decision or what we expect of her.”
Adopting their most professional faces, the four examiners walked towards the door. Crystal Clear addressed a school porter. “Give us a few minutes to get settled then wheel in the trolley.”
The stallion nodded.
“Let's go and meet Miss Sparkle.”
They walked out through the staffroom door with the passive determined look of professional examiners. But the professor permitted herself a small smile. “She's going to be a fun one to teach.”
The other teachers nodded their heads.
“So how shall we decide who gets to be her personal tutor?”
Author's Note
Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on the original version of this story.
