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 (Hardcover)

by Elizabeth Wissner-Gross (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
A self-styled "educational strategist" and mother of two high achievers, journalist Wissner-Gross has found a keenly sought after niche in helping parents "package" their children for college admission. The author's approach is to endow the student's advocate, usually a parent who has the most time to devote to the task, with the skills to elicit and enhance the student's natural accomplishments, rendering him or her desirable to colleges. Through sound experience, and the use of scattered case profiles, Wissner-Gross demonstrates that even students with extremely unlikely prospects for admission to good colleges can succeed handsomely when they are wisely packaged—i.e., when their specific academic passions ("the current buzzword") are extracted and polished. The author highlights 272 "secrets" to winning at the college application process, from answering the Big Question of why a specific college would take one's son or daughter to preparing for standardized testing and interviews with college admissions officers. Most helpful is the author's advice gleaned from admissions officers about the best and worst kinds of application essays ("Avoid writing an essay about a luxury tour"), and her reminder to stay persistent even when a student is waitlisted at her college of choice. (Aug.)
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Product Description
A sought-after "packager" of high school students shares highly coveted strategies to help parents get their kids into the country’s most competitive colleges

Did you know? A child’s guidance counselor can help reverse a deferral. A parent can help get a child off a waiting list. And there is a way for students to back out of Early Decision once they’ve been accepted.

Based on the controversial insider information Elizabeth Wissner-Gross has gleaned from working for years as a successful packager of high school students and from interviews with heads of admission at some of the nation’s most competitive colleges, this book helps parents answer questions such as: Can an application be sabotaged by a competing student or parent? How do colleges really know if a student applies to two or more schools for Early Decision? Is it possible to prescreen a teacher’s recommendation? As well as the biggest question of all: Of the tens of thousands of highly qualified students that graduate each year, why should a college choose yours?

Targeting the college-educated parents of today’s college-bound teenagers who seek to gain a proven edge in the highly secretive and seemingly arbitrary college admissions process, What Colleges Don’t Tell You (and Other Parents Don’t Want You to Know) reveals 272 little- known, unconventional, tried-and-true secrets to help parents get their children into the most competitive schools of their dreams.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Hudson Street Press (August 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594630313
• ISBN-13: 978-1594630316
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #310,334 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Morally bankrupt, and bad advice, to boot, December 14, 2006

By	InfoDiva (New York) - See all my reviews

Wissner-Gross has managed, in one slim volume, to put forth every college admissions "trick" ever invented for "packaging" an applicant. If you use these ideas, not only will college admissions committees be on to you in a heartbeat, but you risk sending a child out into the world who believes that being clever and deceptive is a substitute for being genuine.

Just some examples of the kinds of advice this book provides:

**Manipulate your child's class rank by having him take non-challenging, outside courses where a good grade is guaranteed.

**Remember, nice guys finish last. If your child is not named editor in chief of the school newspaper, don't let him settle for a lesser job.

**Fake interest in an unpopular major in order to tip the admission scales in your favor. (Geology, anyone?)

**If your child is not athletic, least have him express interest in the Crew team and contact the coach.

**Parents should be prepared to contest all grades, and question any teacher whose grading policy is less than desirable.

**Get a pro to edit that all-important college essay.

**Secretly organize your child, and make sure you keep track of all his classroom test dates and paper deadlines. Parents must read all homework assignments thoroughly.

I could go on, but this is typical of the advice offered by this book.

Follow these instructions, and your parental manipulation will be patently clear to college admissions professionals, who have seen it all and can sniff out an overpackaged applicant a mile away.

Even worse, your child will arrive at college feeling inadequate and totally unprepared to fend for himself. After all, your actions have shown that he couldn't even be trusted to remember when his own term papers were due!

There are many wise and thoughtful college admissions books out there, but this isn't one of them.

72 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't Develop a Strategy Based on This, December 3, 2006

By	RP851 (California) - See all my reviews

As a college professor and parent of a high-performing high school junior, I found this to be a very disturbing book. The author is a journalist and self-styled "educational strategist" who claims to be privy to insider "secrets" about the selective college admissions process. In fact, the useful parts of her book did not contain anything that was secret, and the rest could be best described as wrong-headed or downright wrong. She states, for example, "If your kid gets a C, then you get a C as a parent." I won't even begin to go into why I think this belief is a recipe for disaster. Elsewhere, she says "Don't be fooled by a low faculty-to-student ratio, for example, on a campus where students are not supposed to speak to faculty members except during very limited office hours." She has this backwards. A low student-to-faculty ratio is what is considered desirable. The book is full of advice and comments like these that are at best off the mark and at worst potentially harmful. I suggest you spend your money on one of the truly useful guides to the college admissions process instead of this one.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book helped me get into the Ivy League!, May 4, 2008

By	Taryn Wells "Taryn" (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 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 (Paperback)

I know this book is written for the parents, but, as a student, I found this book to be EXTREMELY helpful. I'll tell you the difference right off the bat: as a high school senior, I applied to renowned universities like Johns Hopkins, Tufts, and Boston College, and was not admitted to any of them. I was forced to go to the one public school I applied to and was very bitter about it. The first year at my public college, I tried to transfer to Johns Hopkins, hoping that my previous wait-listed status meant I would make a terrific transfer student. I was rejected once again... Then I bought this book the following year, and I was able to get into every college I applied to after that, including Cornell. I went from being turned down by second-tier schools to getting accepted into the Ivy League.. all from taking advice from this book.

Other reviewers complain about the cut-throat and perhaps manipulative approach this book wants parents to take, but I didn't read this book as a parent. The tips I focused on instead were the ones about the application process itself. I do believe that parents should encourage their kids to take part in extracurriculars in which the child both enjoys and stand outs, but someone that deserves to go a good school should be able to handle their own homework deadlines and applications. The book instead should be taken as guidance for things like writing a non-blasé application essay, getting good recommendations, what to do on college interviews, and how to show an admissions committee that a student's qualities and passions are essential for their university.