I’m reading The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College http://amzn.to/2cpAC4a It tracks prospective students and admissions officers at Wesleyan in 1999-2000. (Still worthwhile to read IMHO.) I’m wondering
a) if anyone else has read it
b) more importantly, what has changed in the 15 years since it was published, as far as how admissions decides. I’m wondering if the general process is still the same, or have things like the admissions offices’ use of data totally changed things? There’s not a lot of discussion of online in the book and that has to have been a game changer, especially for smaller schools.
Yes I have read it, and others like it. Of course the process may vary at different locations, and the number of applicants has raised for most schools, but I have not seen anything indicating the process has changed substantially.
It’s a well written, highly engaging book frequently referred to here and elsewhere.
If “SF” in your user name refers to San Francisco, you may be interested in how UC holistic admissions readings are done (and note how it differs from how it is done at some other colleges, based on books and articles about the other colleges). The process is described in detail at http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/committees/aepe/hout_report_0.pdf .
I found it very interesting, too! I listened to it as an audio book, and the last section was all about “where they are now.” One of the students featured in the book (Jordan) went on to found Unigo, which is a fun fact that connects to college admissions!
This is a bit of an aside, but not that much: It’s funny how many people who do really well at admissions (testing well, getting As in everything, writing the right essays . . .) seem to focus their life later on, well, doing the same thing. I know one Ivy grad who went into working for the college board, another 2 Ivy grads (different school) who tutor for the SATs, It’s like: that’s their skill set. That’s what they can offer the world after so many years of focusing on this one goal. I’m not saying it’s a bad skill set necessarily, but . . . was it worth all of that work? Was this their ultimate dream? I mean as they were growing up and the resources and parenting pressing on them to move forward relentlessly toward the Ivies and all that it takes, I doubt that the parents and the child were thinking: Oh boy! I hope to go to an Ivy so that I can do SAT test prep FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!
It makes you wonder if the focus were a little bit less, what else they might have done?
Thanks for posting this OP, and also thanks @ucbalumnus . Very interesting.
I haven’t yet read The Gatekeepers, but plan to. Are there any senior posters out there, maybe @lookingforward , @T26E4 , or @MYOS1634 , who can say if anything has changed significantly in college admissions, since The Gatekeepers is now 15 years old? For instance, the common app I guess would be an obvious one, or the influx of international students.
Would love to hear some additional perspective, so apologies for “summoning” all you illustrious folks:-)
Glancing through my copy, first chapter… something I found interesting was the description of how competitve colleges are over each other’s students… they refer to “Trinity, Bates and Muhlenberg” trying to pick off Wesleyan’s kids, and that Wesleyan is trying to pick off “Brown’s kids and Yale’s kids”. We tend not to focus on that part when discussing admissions.
It also discusses how they try to get all kids intersted, even though the book’s hero tells the author “You realize that, further down the line, a lot of these kids will end up applying and being denied”.
Three things have changed at Wesleyan specifically since the book was written: 1) Wesleyan is no longer need-blind. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall for some of those discussions when the assistant deans have to re-convene to battle it out over some applicant that may have looked quirky and interesting when the financial aid office was under-budget, but, looks more like a calculated risk once the aid office is over-budget. 2) Secondly, it no longer has a separate application or essay; it’s all Common App, so there’s really no way of judging a candidate’s level of enthusiasm for Wesleyan (except maybe, by applying ED.) And, 3) thirdly, it has gone test-optional. How would Ralph Figueroa factor in some people submitting scores and others not. Is it possible to be really objective under those circumstances? I don’t know the answer to that.
One big change in the past 15 years is that colleges have much more sophisticated software available to track demonstrated interest and to calculate merit aid as an enrollment incentive.
I read it a couple years ago. Fascinating. I recall Wesleyan really trying hard to recruit and admit an American Indian from a reservation. If I recall correctly, they hadn’t ever enrolled a student with that background. I wonder what the new group is they are trying for. I remember a few years back Harvard making a big deal of the Syrian refugees they had enrolled.
I also wonder if after the disastrous overnight with the girl they were trying to woo, if they gave more thought to who they choose as student hosts.
I recall that that Native American recruit was a D student in HS and eventually flunked out of Wesleyan.
I also recall how that same Wesleyan admissions officer who lobbied for the Native American student, dissed the asian girl. In the epilogue it was revealed that the admissions officer admitted he would have admitted the asian girl had he been aware that she shared his stance on the death penalty.
The one asian/pac-islander Wesleyan admissions officer wanted to quit but was concerned that if he quit, there’d be no one to speak against the pervasive bias he observed the other admissions officers showing against the asian applicants.
My D went to Wesleyan with that cohort, but was a transfer so not involved with that admissions cycle. Off hand, I can’t think of too much that is different now, besides the aforementioned pervasiveness of the Common App (which neither of my kids used; both did all separate applications.)
Well, I guess maybe the whole “internet” presence thing–social media definitely adds a layer of both connection and necessary carefulness that wasn’t really a factor when my kids were applying (2000 and 2004).
I read the book about 8 years ago, but only after my kids had gone through the admissions process. I didn’t want to read it before or during their application periods.
I would assume that efforts toward diversity have continued but the end of need-blind admissions must affect socioeconomic diversity. Just speculating though.
Yes, and there are plenty of Ivy graduates who are farmers, engineers, innkeepers, welders, school teachers, mechanics, social workers, carpenters, college professors, research scientists, doctors, lawyers, diplomats, business tycoons, etc…
And, in my limited experience, many if not most of the students at Ivies were NOT relentlessly pressing towards a singular college admission goal throughout their youths… just saying.
It may be that the end of need-blind admissions was just to make sure that the targeted financial aid budget was not overrun. Need-blind schools may (and probably do) adjust their admissions criteria in areas that are correlated to financial need, so that the admission class can hit a target level of financial need and financial aid, even if financial need is not considered for individual applicants. Becoming need-aware means that the school wants to have a hard limit on financial aid costs, even if its targeted financial aid budget is not changed.
The book is interesting as background, how things were back then, and for some of the gossipy parts. I’d be careful not to assume it mirrors today. Even a few years can bring significant changes.
15 years? Number of apps has jumped, (apparently, especially since Wes went test optional.) That alone makes it harder for all the sought after colleges to wade through the very final rounds. The number of APs available has increased in high schools, internships and other experiences, it goes on and on. Not everyone takes advantage of all that’s available, but for a certain college level and sort of kid, more do than 15 years ago. Back then, there was no College Confidential, either. Or NPCs, as much info about merit aid. FA has evolved. There are more qualified URM and lower SES apps. Some groups have scores rising.
What can impress adcoms can also change.
But another thing is that kids change. They get savvier about some things (not everything, we know that.)
“All told, [Figueroa] would read close to fifteen hundred applications that winter, devoting at least twenty minutes to each, and sometimes more than an hour. On average, he would spend upward of twelve hours a day, six days a week, just reading, thinking, and recording his impressions. If he was diligent, and the choices were fairly straightforward, he could process as many as thirty applications in a day. But more often than not, he became bogged down.” (p.120)
Dustyfeathers, your comments do not reflect the kids I personally know who went to Ivies. Don’t want to get into a tangent but honestly, Ivy grads, like other able students, tend to do well in a wide variety of fields. Also elite schools tend not to favor the kind of applicant you are describing anyway. Disheartening that you got so many likes, frankly.
From “Gatekeepers”: