are thse two books similar? like if i buy acing the college admission, should i still buy A is for admission?
<p>um.. anyone??</p>
<p>Both are, of course, by the same author. </p>
<p>"A is for Admissions" is dated. It came out in 1997 and was about Hernandez's experiences several years earlier at Dartmouth. There is a lot of basically useless stuff about the AI in the book which is an "Academic Index" that Ivies use to decide whether or not they can accept an athlete for the team even though he has less stellar academics. (The only input to the AI are SAT I, SAT II, and class rank.) She says in "A is for Admissions" that you should never use the Common App, but she modifies this in "Acing the College Application". I have other problems with "A is for Admissions". In chapter 1, she complains that most members of Ivy adcoms do not have Ivy degrees and so you will be judged by people who are not as smart as you are (or her). Her attitude in a lot of places is that Ivy adcoms are the guardian of Social Darwinism and that nobody can have a better goal than getting into an Ivy. She also tends to ignore the fact that there are only so many slots open and that there isn't room for all of the qualified applicants. On the other hand, I like "Acing the College Application" a lot. I particularly like advice about using an activity-list in the same format as the chart in the application instead of attaching a resume. In short, "Acing the College Application" is good and "A is for Admissions" is dated (and in my own opinion, bad). </p>
<p>Good books on the internal workings of adcoms are "The Gatekeepers" by Steinberg, "Admissions Confidential" by Toors, and "Harvard Schmarvard" by Mathews. "The Gatekeepers" is written by a Wash Post reporter observing Wellesley. It is respectful of adcoms and the work they do. "Admissions Confidential" is written by a former adcom member at Duke. It is a little cynical, but explicit about what happens in the committee. It is probably the best unvarnished view of the selection process. "Harvard Schmarvard" is by a Wash Post writing about the whole process. He is very critical of the brand-name consciousness driving tens of thousands of applicants towards a very few schools.</p>
<p>If you just use "Acing the College Application" by Hernandez, that is probably enough. I like the way it relates everything to the actual application form.</p>
<p>Actually, I would highly recommend anyone thinking of applying to HYPSM read "Harvard Schmarvard" by Jay Mathews. I say this knowing that it won't help everyone because a lot of people will blow it off, but that it might help some of you. I'm not recommending that anyone not apply to HYPSM. I just think that reading "Harvard Schmarvard" will give you a better idea of the odds of acceptance, the lottery aspect of the process for the extremely talented people at the top, and the actual value of a HYPSM degree.</p>
<p>thx for the reply : )</p>
<p>Ditto on the value of Harvard Schmarvard..wish I had started with that one. Lots of common sense from a Harvard grad. Does not diss you if you want to apply to the top Ivies but opens your eyes to many equally valuable and less ridiculously unpredictable and extremely selective paths.
Do not focus only on highly selective schools Do not focus only on highly selective schools is my mantra.
Open your eyes to schools that are likely to admit you is advice that can't be repeated often enough. My S will attend a Reach school, but admission was a total surprise and our emotional investment was well spent on other schools in his Match category. We all still believe he could have gotten a great start at life in any of them.</p>
<p>"Acing" is a good book for a student to read. It's concise, to the point, and covers many common questions in a short time. It was the only book I bought for my son; the others I borrowed and read, but thought the authors' points of view were too personal and tended to have a lot of detail that he found irrelevant.</p>
<p>I got both from our local library. They are very similar. I don't prefer one over the other.</p>