Customer Reviews

Admissions Confidential: An Insider's Account of the Elite College Selection Process

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is a nice, light, fast, fun read. College admissions staff have many stories to tell. Toor tells plenty about applicants, admissions officers, and her friends. This is a personal case study, not empirical research, so any findings or conclusions should be viewed with real caution. Many will find it too personal and, at times, self-centered. Personally, I would have been glad to forego the pig stories, and I'm not referring to applicants.

That said, writing here as a long-time university professor and administrator, none of what Toor wrote surprised me. In fact, I continue to be more surprised by people who think that students applying to great schools are admitted based only on their SATs, just like some parents believe that students at large public universities have full-time professors teaching all the first-year classes.

Toor reports the abundant resources (if low pay for admissions staff), intense competition and sometimes convuluted admissions decisions of one of our most prestigious schools. The portfolio of scores, skills, essays, recommendations, extracurriculars and other facets of the first twelve years of an education comes under closer scrutiny than any of the work the student is likely to put forth in his or her classes in the coming four years. The investment part of the educational model at Duke appears to be spent in the admissions office, not saved for the classroom.

Research shows, contrary to the elitist assertion repeated here, that it matters less what university you attend than to what university you are admitted. Its the admissions process that is the hallmark of the top schools, not the academic experience itself. Get admitted to Penn State and Princeton, attend Penn State, and statistics show that the graduate will do as well having attended Penn State instead of Princeton. And she will have saved enough money in four years to fund much of her entire retirement. Strange but true. So it just might be worth finding out if you can cut it in the (Duke) admissions rounds. Pray you get admitted. But then save your money and attend a good but affordable school.

The author's opinion of herself -- how interesting she is and how her Yale background (frequently mentioned) makes her eminently qualified to rate others -- is the driving force behind this book. There is a certain amount of informative material here that can open the eyes of college applicants and their parents and counselors. However, the only thing that really makes the book unique is its personal memoir style, which on balance detracts from rather than adds to the value of the book. Padding the book with irrelevant "insights" into her personal life and with reprints of columns previously published elsewhere both reflect that the book is really as much about the author as anything else. The reader also gets the impression that the author sought the job in the first place in order to write a book about it later. There is some justice in the world, however. Telling applicants to be careful not to submit essays with "embarrassing typos," the author relates a tale of having a girl applicant write that "she wanted to go to a 'smaller private school like Duke,' not one the the 'big state pubic institutions." (2001 paperback edition, p. 49.) It is so sweet that a few pages later, she herself writes: "Kids from elite private schools rarely get fives in achievement. And only the top few from the good pubic schools do." (Page 94.) Oops! If you're going to be smugly superior about others' imperfections, you'd better also be perfect.

I am a college admission professional and while I really enjoyed the peak inside the Duke Admission office, the author does not offer real advice for the type of people who will most likely buy this book. 3.9+ gpa and 1400 SAT's are great credentials, but what else--what is your hook--how do you stand apart from thousands just like you?

I don't envy the challenge of handling 14,000 BWRK (Bright, Well-Rounded Kids) and a goal of selecting maybe 3,000 for admission? Lots of people who are qualified are not admitted, but you do not need a whole book to learn this.

Toor's writing style does suck you in and you do find yourself rooting for the few students who she profiles a bit more indepth. I for one did not mind her forays outside the admission office as it showed some personality, however the pig stories might have been a bit much. Her introductions to each chapter show off her excellent writing skills, it is just too bad that her talent is tied up in an overlong newspaper article.

If you are thinking about this book because you want a leg up on the competition, you are probably better off reading A for Admission (which Toor takes a swipe at in her introduction) by Michele Hernandez.

Bottom line is that there are lots of great colleges out there, some have big time names like Duke, Yale, Stanford etc... While others offer excellent educations in their own right even if their name is Kenyon, Carleton, Albion or Grinnell. The names might not be as recognizable, but the experience will be just as good if not better.

Glad I read this--yes for the inside look, but not much else.

I picked up this book because I thought it might shed some light on whether or not my daughter was really a candidate for the elite schools she had been getting letters from. Fortunately, I read it on the bookstore couch before wasting any money on it.

The apparent purpose of the book was not to give an insider's account of the admissions office, but rather to show how hip the author is, and how morally and intellectually superior she was to her fellow admission officers, the applicants, and their parents.

For example, she's hung up on race, and she obviously feels she has an enlightened additude about it that differentiates her from the ignorant, racist masses that surround her. She's appalled at the racial stereotyping she sees in well meaning letters of recomendation for black applicants. She has no problem with stereotypes, however, when she expresses her contempt for "southern frat boys," or her indifference toward a "typical asian kid," or when she gleefully rejects a "classic Branford guy."

You may find some useful tidbits in this book, but its not worth wading through all the author's snide comments, anecdotes about her personal life, and incessant bragging. Then again, maybe you're interested in what she had for dinner when she stayed at the house of some guy she met last year.

I have an 11th grade boy whom I believed was "ivy" material. Now after reading this brutally honest book, I know I am off the mark. I think every parent who is concerned about where their child goes to college needs to read this honest and helpful book. Rachel Toor tells it like it really is; I believe she is telling the truth, and even though we don't want to hear or believe it, it is real.

The writer of Admissions Confidential provides us with a detailed, easy-to-read book on the day-to-day life of an admissions officer. The book reads like a summer novel. I would give it higher marks except for two things that really bothered me: 1) Ms Toor struck me as a liberal snob. She was excited about admitting the "edgy" student, but had her nose up at the rich people, jocks, and others who didn't seem to fit her profile. I began to think she was hired for diversity reasons vs the need to fill in some regional spots. 2) I really resented the section where she was stuffing the final response letters to students and was telling her partners "sucks!" when she came upon a person she remembers interviewing and didn't care for. That blew me away and even for a "personal memoir" struck me truly unprofessional and put the whole profession in a bad light.

I'm wondering if I read the same book as the other reviewers. I found Admissions Confidential to be an interesting, lively, funny and beautifully written take on a process that I didn't really understand. The author devotes no more than 2 pages to her pet pig, and it seems to me that the "personal statements" with which Toor opens each chapter are simply examples of the kinds of essays that college applicants are asked to write. Toor is opening herself up (bravely, perhaps sometimes unwisely) to the same scrutiny that admissions officers give students.

The way the book was packaged made it look more like an expose; reading it, that was clearly not the author's intent. SHe seems to want only to describe what she saw. She states her own personal biases clearly, and talks about how this influences the larger process. Sometimes the personal stuff is relevant, sometimes not. But I for one learned a lot about how the system works. Knowledge is always power. It may not help my daughter get into her first choice school, but then again, if she doesn't, I'll have a better idea what she was up against.

Perhaps those who "read" the book while standing in a bookstore didn't really read it all.

Rachel Toor is a sad case of someone who needed some attention in her life in order to build herself up. I feel sorry for the students who were in her region -- she obviously has a giant chip on her shoulder and does nothing more than glorify how much she looked down on them. Though the author asserts that this is not a book about how to get into college, that's certainly the market she's aiming for. Methinks she doth protest too much. She takes great pains to distance herself from "other" authors who write about the admissions process even though they do an infinitely more credible job and don't hide their motives as Toor does. As the reviewer above points out, there are much more informative books (A is for Admission, Writing the College Essay) than this one which is so offensive that it was hard to read through it at my local bookshop. I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it. What an ego-trip.

OK, I admit it, I didn't actually buy this book. But I sped-read it in about an hour at my local bookstore; that's about how much time it takes to get the point of this book. Parents of high schoolers who think their kids are ivy (or other competitive college) material should read this book. I work in a large public high school college advising office; it is a brutal process. Brand-name conscious parents are the main problem; who wants to spend $40K a year sending your kid to a school that your tennis club buddies won't recognize the name of? Toor gives what I believe is a pretty accurate look at how an admissions committee physically undertakes its task; and lets kids and parents know what it takes to stand out. Parents should take to heart her sarcastic comments about things that turn off admissions officers. Her basic message is that BWRK's (bright well-rounded kids) need not apply; the colleges are only encouraging your applications so that they can boast about how many applied and how few they accepted. Toor knows it's all about "yield."

This book seemed to be too quick, too breezy and a little self-serving. It is always suspect when a former insider is revealing the goings-on in an environment that she las left and I felt that Ms Toor was more than a little superior-feeling and perhaps even bitter. The personal information did not seem to blend well with the rest of the book and I found it forced and not terribly interesting. Also, I saw one case in which she is talking about a student and changes mid-paragraph from "he" to "she." If you are interested in this topic, I would recommend you read "The Gatekeepers" and "Bright College Years."