<p>[The link won't last forever] </p>
<p>An</a> Admissions Race That's Already Won - Chronicle.com</p>
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<p>I recently spent a year and a half in the admissions office of a highly selective Eastern college as an ethnographer, seeking to understand just how admissions officers make their decisions. ... What I found was consistent with the American ideal of educational meritocracy. I saw admissions officers who invariably made the quality of high-school transcripts the most prominent criterion of evaluation. They assessed standardized-test scores as only one part of an application, recognized outstanding records of leadership and community service, and were wise enough to distinguish genuinely strong applications from ones that were buffed and puffed by private consultants. Yes, I saw officers give special consideration to applications that were connected to promising donors — it was a private institution and, while hardly poor, it depended on philanthropy for its financial well-being — but nothing close to the shameless horse trading that occasionally makes selective admissions headline news.</p>
<p>Indeed, I realized that it was not big donations or athletic recruitment that most undermined the American dream of meritocratic admissions, but rather, and however paradoxically, the fact that our dream has come true. The days when old-school connections were enough to get through the doors of top colleges, and when dark skin or a Jewish surname were enough to be excluded, are over. Selective colleges now sort applications based on measurable accomplishment. But in general, only the more affluent among us can afford the infrastructure necessary to produce that accomplishment in our children: academically excellent high schools, rich with extracurricular programs; summer sports camps; private tutoring; "service" trips to Israel or Guatemala; and, of course, the time and money to invest in the elaborate competition for seats at selective institutions.</p>
<p>My research convinced me that the ever-more-frenzied activity surrounding selective admissions is essentially ceremonial — an elaborate national ritual of just desserts. The fact that the fates of particular applicants at particular colleges remain uncertain until the end enables us to believe that the winners earn their victories in a fair game. That is how the anxiety that attends the application season is deceptive: It encourages those who experience it to believe that the outcomes of the process are considerably more uncertain than they actually are.
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