<p>I think when my friend danas writes about "tell all" books he is referring to what I call "kiss and tell" books--books by former admission officers about the insider's view of the college admission process. In that genre, I think the most useful book is </p>
<p>Chuck Hughes, the author, is a former admissions officer at Harvard, and has much more recent experience in admissions than some of the other authors of kiss-and-tell books. (Oddly, his writing is really strange, and as xiggi and I have each separately pointed out in earlier threads, he has at least one pet issue about word usage that he used to see in applications on which his opinion is WRONG according to the best dictionaries. But most of his advice is good and specific.) The most helpful books for applicants, I think, are the books that make clear the HUGE difference in selectivity among the</a> most outstanding 100 or so colleges in the United States and how amazing students have to be in their high school years to have a reasonable shot at the most selective colleges. Recent books are better than older books, and for a lot of applicants awareness of the situation outside the northeast (very rare in books on this subject) is better than a point of view from the northeastern United States, where all of the craziness about college admission in this country is concentrated.</p>