<p>I'm reading it now, and having just mentioned it in another thread I thought it would be worth sharing.</p>
<p>Here's the link:</p>
<p>I like it. It's about how the admins at Wesleyan selected the class of 2004. Good reading and some helpful advice embedded within the stories.</p>
<p>Any other books that you can recommend?</p>
<p>Daniel Golden, THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
Christopher Avery, Andrew Fairbanks, and Richard Zeckhauser, THE EARLY ADMISSIONS GAME
Michele A. Hernandez, A IS FOR ADMISSION</p>
<p>Note that the above are mostly not case-study books; but they are “must-reads” in the college admissions subgenre. I have yet to find a case-study book that matches THE GATEKEEPERS in quality and credibility.</p>
<p>I visited our local library and read several college admissions/search books on various topics. Since many of the guides are published annually and our second child is 3 years down the road, I didn’t want to spend money where I didn’t need to. Besides The Gatekeepers, other books I read include “A Is for Admission: The Insider’s Guide to Getting into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges” and “Admissions confidential: an insider’s account of the elite college selection process” by Rachel Toor who was at Duke. Another one was “Fat envelope frenzy : one year, five promising students, and the pursuit of the Ivy League prize.” There were also books about writing college essays which were helpful. </p>
<p>There was one I read, and I can’t remember what it was called, that I didn’t like at all. It was by a mother who gave advice on how to get your not-so-special kid to look good on the admissions application. I remember one tip was to have your child take photographs, then ask permission to display them at a local business (like a bank) then list the photography exhibit as one of the student’s achievements.</p>
<p>I was surprised to read in the Gatekeepers that admissions standards were so different depending on the context of a student’s high school and ethnicity. I remember that he contrasts an Asian student in Silicon Valley with a Native American student from a reservation. Guess who has the stronger academic record…then guess who gets in.</p>
<p>The only thing that bothered me was named wrong bridge to get to NJ from the Staten Island where Jordan lived. Call me nitpicker that is I am, but the author was affiliated to NYT, no?
Hi Keilexandra
Read this! I mean, this must be the one post #3 is talking about. Nasty but good advices.
Elizabeth Wissner-Gross
What colleges don’t tell you (and other parents don’t want you to know) 272 secrets for getting your kid into the top schools
This is a book for PARENTS but I don’t know any parent more informed than you. You earned it !!</p>
<p>The amount of preference granted based on race is significant. </p>
<p>Even in schools where race preferences are against the law they are being granted (i.e., look at UCLA recently). </p>
<p>Not only will this problem continue, but it will like increasingly grow worse. Anyone observing Asian immigration and educational success patterns will likely come to this conclusion. The achievement gaps will only grow bigger. </p>
<p>I don’t know how top colleges expect to solve the achievement gap at the K-12 level through preferential admissions. In fact, they can’t. It does make faculty and many others feel better, though.</p>
<p>I really enjoyed
[Amazon.com:</a> The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids: Alexandra Robbins: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Overachievers-Secret-Lives-Driven-Kids/dp/140130902X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245202488&sr=1-1]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Overachievers-Secret-Lives-Driven-Kids/dp/140130902X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245202488&sr=1-1)</p>
<p>Yes. Then, if the school newspaper chief boy, whom just one of 27,000 editors in chief of the high schools in US –‘s parents read the nasty advice giving book and padded up some more, he’d have gotten in Stanford ED already.
Somehow I feel he’d be so much happier in Middlebury, so it all ends well.</p>
<p>
Actually it was a pretty bad sentence so it’s hard to tell if he thinks that the Verrazano connects Staten Island to New Jersey or not. It’s on page 81, in case anyone else is feeling really compulsive about this. He is right that it’s about an hour from the Verrazano to Princeton; that’s a fact. But why anyone on Staten Island would want to go to the Verrazano on the way to Princeton is beyond me. The sentence makes sense if there’s a law or even a ritual that says that before heading off to NJ you must first drive by the entrance to the Verrazano Bridge. Otherwise, he seems to think that’s the way to NJ, which is sad, because otherwise it’s a great book.</p>
<p>BTW, the NYT is notorious for its failure to fact check: </p>
<p>[Jayson</a> Blair - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair]Jayson”>Jayson Blair - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Gee thanx for clarification. Im not the only one then, phew.
I mean, the kid lived in Tottenville, tippy end of SI, total opposite from Verrazano, which connects SI to Brooklyn, and there weren’t IKEA or Fairway there yet, which would be the reason theyd migrate back time to time toward Brooklyn.
NYer tend to treat Staten Island differently from other real boroughs. The NYT could be heralding that attitude by not checking the fact shown in even the crudest map.</p>
<p>The Rachel Toor book had a lot of dubious material in it as I recall from discussions about it here on CC when it came out. The combo of THE GATEKEEPERS and A IS FOR ADMISSIONS is a nice pairing that gives you the flavor of, more than the precise reality of, the admissions process.</p>
<p>As far as the Asian from Silicon Valley vs. the Native American from the reservation, which one adds a unique perspective to the campus? Colleges admit classes, not individual students. As one student observed, it’s pretty dumb if we have 17 middle-class white girls in a seminar talking about discrimination.</p>
<p>If I remember correctly, the Native American bailed out after one year. And the Admission officer who’d advocated for him went to work as a GC for a private high school in CA. We got to meet him in 2000. Nice man, totally dedicated to getting more low SES, marginalized students into Wes. But sometimes, it does not work out and everyone loses.</p>
<p>But the Native American crashed and burned at college. What was the point of admitting him?</p>
<p>I read the book a long time ago, but Native American’s aren’t well represented at colleges and many would like to have them for diversity. He made a mistake with him, but how do you ever know? Many white middle-class and upper-middle class students have issues at college, take time off, flunk out, have emotional problems,maturity issues, you take a chance with most students. As many admissions have told me and I’ve read, no student really takes the place of another, they wanted that one for whatever reason, they didn’t keep your student out. Some parents find out after applying again after a gap year or as a transfer, their student still can’t get in a certain college/university, it’s all a process that can never be 100% predictable or understood.
Why admit Cedric Jennings who scored under 1000 on the old SAT? He did very well and continued on to get a few advanced degrees. If I remember correctly, the Native American student knew it wasn’t a right fit for him and maybe was more wise at that moment. I read on this site about a female URM at Yale that is doing well with a 1800 SAT, you just can’t tell and that genteman although good at his job wasn’t perfect. No one is.</p>
<p>I didn’t want to read “The Gatekeepers” or any other book like it, until my kids had already landed at whatever college they fit best. I did read it, finally, and it was interesting, but it would have felt yukky to me to read those books and then try to get my kids get in somewhere with any kind of scheming. We just let things happen naturally, and our kids did fine.</p>
<p>It might help some kids or parents to read it, once a rejection or acceptance comes in the mail, to understand the results and not take them to heart.</p>
<p>After our kids got in and went to college, I also read the book about a hard-driving school in CA (forget the title, maybe “School of Dreams”, and the more recent one about Bed-Stuy, because I was curious about the culture of schools that their college classmates went to, which is so different from the low-achieving culture of our small town).</p>
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<p>I agree. This book was highly recommended to me by another parent but I found Toor’s attitude annoying. She was very condescending toward suburban, upper middle class kids with good grades and EC’s (as in my D). The book offered little useful information.</p>
<p>I liked A is for Admissions.</p>
<p>
That’s assuming “discrimination” is representative of compelling topics for college classroom discussion.</p>
<p>Take any important concept that might be subject to serious philosophical inquiry. Goodness,Truth, Beauty, etc. How much does one’s ethnic or racial perspective bring to a disciplined discussion about these ideas? What makes for a snappy college conversation are intellectual and spiritual qualities such as curiosity, a sense of humor, and skill or creativity in using the English language.</p>
<p>Many URMs possess these qualities, amply. Many high-scoring whites do not. A good college admissions process should identify and expose these qualities for serious review, not stop at the numbers and check-boxes. I’ve only thumbed through the Gatekeepers once. Does it seem, from the coverage in that book, that the Wesleyan adcom had a clear understanding of the Native American kid’s personal qualities? What he’d contribute to a book discussion or a team research project, for example? Was he interviewed?</p>
<p>I think what URMs often bring to the table is not so much a unique perspective on issues like discrimination. It’s an edginess, it’s humor, it’s grit and determination, it’s interesting personalities that you might not see so much among upper middle class suburban white kids. But the admissions committee has to seek out that stuff.</p>
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<p>A fine bit of stereotyping. Yup, those URM’s, gosh, they just have so much character.</p>
<p>Not like those bland cookie cutter upper middle class suburban white kids. It gets hard to tell all those blue-eyed Davids and Ashlees apart!</p>
<p>Going back to the books- I’ve read both the Gatekeepers and Overchievers- the process described in the Gatekeepers gave me some sympathy for the difficult choices admissions officers have to make and the latter made me realize that there are thousands of kids just like me. Didn’t make the waitlists and rejections so hard to swallow when you think about how many kids with identical profiles and ECs are competing for so few spots.</p>
<p>I love book talk and can’t help</p>
<p>Compmom
Here is what someone told me
“Did you know that by (fill in the blank) you are already building your child’s college r</p>