A scandalous exploration of elite undergraduate life from the author of The Bonfire of the Vanities Dupont University: the Olympian halls of learning housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition... or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from Sparta, North Carolina, who has come here on a full scholarship. But Charlotte soon learns that for the upper-crust coeds of Dupont, sex, status, and kegs trump academic achievement every time. As Charlotte encounters Dupont's elite, she gains a new, revelatory sense of her own power, that of her difference and of her very innocence. But little does she realise that she will act as a catalyst in all of their lives.