Customer Reviews

College Admissions Trade Secrets: A Top Private College Counselor Reveals the Secrets, Lies, and Tricks of the College Admissions Process

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I was accepted early to Princeton last year and this book significantly improved my application and my strategy. Every page was full of facts, details and good advice. In large part, I owe my admission to what I learned from Trade Secrets. I suggest reading this book as soon as possible--it covers everything from 9th grade to the senior year. I was a good student but no superstar; with the help of this book, I turned my good academic performance into a great application. I am positive that my application went from average to very competitive solely by following the advice in this book. Trade Secrets is required reading for anyone who wants a real insider account!

One important note: the other reviews seem to be for the first edition of this book. My friend (a year younger) just bought this book from Amazon and the current edition is a SECOND EDITION, which has none of the errors the first edition had. So all of the little mistakes that the other reviewers write about are gone. I highly recommend reading this book ASAP, and now that the little mistakes are gone, this book is better than ever.

I have two children at Ivy League colleges and one in high school just starting the admissions process, and I've read many admissions books. Trade Secrets is the best of the bunch. While it has a few mistakes (mostly speeling errors), it's got a good combination of advice, lists, tips and honesty that makes it more useful than the others. Most college admissions books are very informative in 1 or 2 areas while totally neglecting other areas... Allen's book touches thoroughly on everything (which is probably why it's about twice as long as most of the other books--and more expensive). If you only want two books on the admissions process, I suggest this one and a college directory (I suggest Princeton Review's "Best Colleges" or Fiske's guide).

Allen knows more about the admissions game than most. As a college advisor at a top New England prep school, I can attest that his advice is at least as good as the advice we give, and in many cases is more detailed and insightful. This is the book I recommend to parents when they have hard questions. Many people inside the college admissions world do not like this book--largely because Allen reveals the bare details of the game and exposes the many flaws and frauds within. If you have a very good college counselor, then you probably do not need this book. Otherwise, do not start the admissions process without first consulting this book--it will enlighten you and certainly give you an advantage.

We're happy to say we've gone 2 for 2 at one of the author's least favorite Ivy League schools and though that certainly doesn't qualify us to write a book on the subject, we do feel more comfortable knowing which books we've read were helpful and which weren't. This book offers no real secrets and in no small part, it's not fully accurate. The author "borrows" liberally from elsewhere*, and much of what is original is flawed. He has a strong dislike of Harvard and Princeton and this is overly obvious all too often. Also, suggestions such as not applying to colleges that "stoop" to asking you whether you had help in preparing your essay (such as Duke) are self-serving; in this instance, the author knows the colleges are checking not to see if the work has been reviewed by parents, teachers or friends (which they assume it has been), but rather to see whether you have hired a "professional college counselor" to do your work for you (the author is one of these). We bought this book as we prepared our 2nd child's application on the off chance that some hidden pearl would be worth the price of admission; none was present. Instead, I suggest the original (*) "A is for Admission", written by someone who has actually been on the AdComm at an Ivy.

I've read several college admissions books, and this one is the most impressive. I've heard Andrew Allen claim, "You bring me any ninth grader, and I'll get him into any college his senior year." And this is exactly what parents pay him lots of $$ to do: get an average student into a top college. And it's not that hard if you really know how college admissions works.

Trade Secrets reveals exactly how students can get admitted to a top college. It's full of tips, tricks, insider information, strange facts and other details that colleges probably wish you didn't have. Trade Secrets also helps students and parents compare and choose colleges.

This book doesn't hold back--Allen lists the "Top 7 Lies Colleges Tell You" and other worthless information that colleges sell to students. According to this book, colleges lie all the time to students and parents and they do it blatantly. Penn's view book, NYU's website, Harvard's course listings--you don't need to look far to catch a college lying. You just need to know what you're looking for. The real purpose of this book is to make students and parents smart consumers.

Trade Secrets includes checklists for students and parents, Allen's well-known "You in 12th Grade" exercise, a review of crazy admissions strategies (some work and some don't), the real scoop behind acceptance rates, things that really matter when comparing colleges, how to write a great essay and prep for interviews, common mistakes that result in rejection, last minute tips for seniors, and how to be a financial aid expert.

No college admissions book I've read covers more topics than Trade Secrets does, and no other book reveals as many of the secrets and insights of top college counselors as this book does. Though Trade Secrets has a few mistakes (mostly spelling, as noted by another reviewer), this book is, by far, the most insightful and thorough book on this topic. Highly recommended.

Two observations have been consistently made about this book: (1) it has a few typos and (2) it has a few opinions. Both are true. If you can't handle typos and opinions, then don't buy this book. There are several other college admissions books that are perfectly proofread and vanilla. (Caveat: I don't think that there are many error-free college books. I recall a Princeton Review book from a few years ago that listed U. Hawaii as a black college. And most admissions books say that "SAT" stands for "Scholastic Aptitude Test" or "Scholastic Assessment Test" when in fact, it stands for neither one-Allen at least knows that.)

However, if you can take a few typos and opinions, then you'd be foolish to ignore this book. I haven't read every admissions book (only read three), but this book has tons of information that I didn't see anywhere else (even my college counselor didn't know a lot of this stuff). I bought and used this book last year, and I can say that you'd be doing yourself a huge disservice by not knowing the advice contained in Trade Secrets. The typos are annoying, but I wouldn't risk your college application because of them. (As for the opinions, I actually appreciated them--they kept the book entertaining and readable.)

If you are a freshman in High School or younger with big ambitions, this book is for YOU. Before this book I was completely oblivious to the importannce of SAT scores, GPA, class ranking, AP classes and extra curricular activites. Yes it is common sense to do all those things well, but this book gives you the stats on the competition, what you need to accomplish every year in high school and serves as a catalyst when you become sidetracked in your off-school endeavors. The author does go into "self-serving rants" often, but this happened only in a comical fashion and aided me through the boring sections (I personally couldn't put the book down.)

DON'T BUY THE BOOK IF YOU
1.) are in junior in High School + (sophomore is pushing it)
2.) hope to find transfer tips (for those college students who hope to transfer to better schools)
3.) hope to find a secret gem, that will turn your 1020 SAT score and 3.1 GPA into a harvard-bound application.

The author has some good information, and answers questions that most college-bound students and their parents don't even know to ask. Unfortunately, it is quite obvious that the author lives and works in one area of the country and has little real knowledge of the rest of the world. I found the fact that he repeatedly belittles the qualifications of high school counselors (he once was one) and college admissions officers, yet never reveals his own qualifications, to be highly questionable. Did he go to a selective or competitive school? The editing is atrocious, his efforts to impress with extensive vocabulary often seem pretentious, and his attempts at humor fell flat or bordered on offensive. The author repeatedly states that a student should seek to stay on the good side of the high school counselor, then tells them to do things that will quickly alienate any overworked and underpaid counselor. I read extensively in an attempt to know what my students are reading and what kind of advice they are getting from other sources. I try to steer students and parents to additional resources with good information - but I cannot honestly say that I could recommend this book to any person or group without serious reservations. I could only read a few pages at a time before I was distracted by poor editing, disturbed by gross inaccuracy - MIT does not have Early Decision, PSAT is not scored to give a result of 1150, etc. - or just plain fed up with all of it. I believe that this is a vanity press book that might have been accepted by a major publishing house, but only after extensive re-working by the author to remove some of these glaring problems. I hope that students or parents who read this book will have the sense and skills to pick out the contradictions and work around them. I will be able to use some of the information in this book, but I will have to do a great deal of value-added packaging first. It will not go on a shelf to be checked out by students.

A very helpful and exhaustive book. Allen has a lot that you need to hear, and you probably have not heard it before.

The book, unlike most college guide books, is not carefully divided based on colleges or regions. Instead, it has more of a narrative structure, although the chapters are divided by aspects of the admissions process.

However, it's very absorbing and witty writing. So interesting that I read it from cover to cover, even though I'm even not in the market for going to college! It was a real eye-opener.

I do have some complaints, though. Don't get the wrong idea from them, however. Allen's work is, overall, is a brisk, useful, and amusing read. And the gripes are:

1. The book is written almost exclusively for traditional college applicants (i.e., 17 years old, currently in high school, etc.) Non-traditional or transfer applicants will therefore find the book's strategies largely (but not entirely) useless.

2. The thing was evidently hastily written: there are countless typos, misspellings, printer's errors, etc. Likely this won't bother you too much given your probable reasons for picking it up in the first place, but it does make me wonder about the reliability of the numbers Allen is reporting. Here, for example, is a disturbing contradiction: [p. 186]

". . . Yale filled 43% of available seats for the Class of 2007 with Early Decision applicants, and those applicants were admitted at a 22% rate . . ."

and then, later, in the same paragraph (!):

"A small number of top colleges . . . most notably Yale, do not fill a significant portion of the freshman class with early decision candidates."

3. The author has what appears to be a very low opinion of UC Berkeley, in contrast to the majority of students, teachers, and college counselors I have worked with. Though this is never stated explicitly, his dissenting view is unmistakable:

"Of the roughly thirty top colleges in America, only six -- the Air Force Academy, Cal Tech, Stanford, Rice, U. Chicago and Northwestern -- aren't on the east coast. [p. 241]"

4. The thing is seriously disorganized. The author, aware of this, warns you about this upfront, but still, it's disorganized all the same. As just one example, suppose you only need help with your essay. So you read his essay section. Unknown to you, there is a lot of potentially useful information on college essays in the "strategies" section which you wouldn't have discovered if you had merely dipped into the "essay" section.

The only solution is to read the entire thing through from cover to cover. I don't think you'll regret this, though.

I read four other books in addition to this book to prepare as a parent for our son's college process. I found this book to be the most realistic. The author does not present the topic of college admissions in a pollyanna manner the way others books did. He tells it like it is or pretty much the way we discovered the process to be. I highly recommend that parents read this book and cite the gist of the book to your prospectice college student over time- Too much reality can demotivate/demoralize your child. Other books that were recommended by counselors,school, etc., placed the colleges on a pedestal as if they are altrusitic without a profit motive in mind. We found the opposite as we went through the college process. Andrew Allen's book prepared us in a way that produced a positive college search process for our family.