The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College
by Jacques Steinberg

BOOK REVIEW by Jennifer Dees

"And now for something completely different," I thought, a few pages into Jacques Steinberg's excellent book, The Gatekeepers: Inside The Admissions Process of a Premier College. The first college admissions book I read, Admission Matters, was more of a how-to guide, and though excellent within that genre, it wasn't exactly a page-turner. The Gatekeepers, in contrast, kept me entranced. I wanted to know what happened to Julianna, Jordan, Aggie, Becca, Migizi, and Tiffany, real students (and these were their real names) who were applying to selective colleges for the Class of 2004. How did the admissions officers view their applications? Did they get into the colleges they wanted? Did they get in anywhere? And finally, which colleges did they choose from those that accepted them?

Steinberg is a wonderful writer, with vivid descriptions that take you behind the scenes at a selective university and that bring you close to the students and admissions officers in the story. Yet what truly makes this such a compelling book is the outstanding reporting underlying the story. Steinberg was an experienced education writer for The New York Times when he was given the unprecedented opportunity to look inside the process of college admissions at Wesleyan University. He spent a full year following one particular admissions officer, Ralph Figueroa, and sat in on meetings of the full admissions staff at the university. He reviewed student applications and interviewed the students mentioned above, without the university's knowledge of which applicants he was following. The university had no review of what he wrote, first in multiple articles for The Times, and later in producing this book. The result is a thorough, objective report on the complete process of college admissions at a selective university, from the multiple perspectives of those involved.

Although it is riveting, the book is so much more than a good story. Through following the admissions paths of these students, their guidance by high school counselors, and their evaluation by Wesleyan, we learn a great deal about the process of college admissions at selective universities in general. Here are some examples I marked in the book as I read:

• Ralph Figueroa is speaking to a group of prospective students at an information session at Wesleyan. "'The first thing we look at is your transcript,' Ralph said. 'We're looking first for the rigor of your curriculum. We're looking to see five courses each year. We're looking for four years of a single foreign language. Only then are we going to look at your performance.' He told his listeners that he usually attempted to gauge an applicant's writing ability by reading the essays, before turning to the recommendations of teachers and counselors."
  
  
• A student who is a National Merit Scholar (with SAT scores in the top 2 percent) is told by his high school counselor, "If you apply to the Ivies, it's always a reach."
  
  
• Steinberg describes the folders in which Wesleyan files student applications. "Prominently listed in the upper-right corner, for example, were the applicant's best scores on the verbal and math sections of the main SAT exam […] as well as on three SAT II [subject] exams of the applicant's choosing. […] When taken together, Wesleyan believed, those scores provided an indication of a student's potential and what he or she had accomplished academically. No one looking at the docket entry could miss seeing an applicant's standardized test scores, though how those numbers were interpreted varied greatly, depending on the applicant and the admissions officer."
  
  
• The relative importance of class rank, AP courses, and extracurricular activities are revealed in a similar manner. As one officer reviews a particular case, Steinberg explains, "In most cases, an admissions officer would like to see a candidate stand out in at least two extracurricular activities, ideally two very different activities."
  
  
• The need for a student to challenge herself or himself is also explored, especially through the case of a student from Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California. Her SAT scores made her a National Merit Scholar finalist, but she had not taken any AP classes and had only a mid-range class rank. Although this rank was within a high school full of high achievers, she didn't seem to be delivering on her potential as demonstrated by her SAT scores, and this was counted against her.

There are many more such gold nuggets of information within this compelling narrative. Although the book was published in 2002, the competitive environment for college admissions it describes has only grown more so since then, so the questions it raises and the way it defines the process still seem very relevant.

After his deep immersion in the world of college admissions and later publication of this book, author Jacques Steinberg took a break from the education beat and began covering media for The New York Times. But in early 2009, he returned to covering higher education for The Times, and launched a blog on college admissions for the organization called "The Choice." The blog has since become an essential resource for students applying to college, their parents, high school counselors, and college admissions officers.

"The Choice" follows the style of The Gatekeepers in using the real names of students and other actual information (schools, grades) relevant to their college admissions process, an approach that makes its insights specific and valuable. In his introductory post in March 2009, Steinberg wrote, "Our primary goal is straightforward: to demystify and illuminate an American rite of passage that typically occurs behind closed doors, whether it’s the doors to the university admissions office, or those of the homes of the applicants themselves."

In its almost three years of publication since then, "The Choice" has gone a long way toward demystifying and illuminating what can be a very difficult process for students and parents. Steinberg is the lead writer and anchor of the blog; quite a few other Times writers contribute to the blog, as do guests including students in the process of applying to college, admissions officers, high school counselors, and outside consultants. As with the students profiled in The Gatekeepers, each fall through spring we follow the actual admissions journey of specific, real students via "The Choice." The comments sections can be as valuable as the posts, with a large community of readers actively participating in the information exchange at "The Choice."

In the Fall of 2011, Steinberg offered an online class, "Inside the College Admissions Process," via The New York Times Knowledge Network. It's only available for a few more days, but I have registered for it and hopefully will be able to complete it.* If so, I'll report on it here, and if it is as valuable as Steinberg's other college admissions offerings, I hope that for the benefit of others, it will be repeated next fall.

December 27, 2011

* Update, 12/31/11: After registering for the Inside the College Admissions Process course, I received a message from Knowledge Network that it would be valid for six months from the date of the registration. I have since completed the course and the following are my thoughts about it.

The "Inside the College Admissions Process" course put together by Jacques Steinberg, available as a self-paced course via The New York Times Knowledge Network, is an interesting amalgam of an outline; some overview information about the college search and application process; and videos from some key players in the process. For overall information, you are better off simply reading Steinberg's book, The Gatekeepers, reviewed above. Although it is not a how-to book, you'll glean the basics of what you should do from reading it. This "course" is Steinberg's attempt to spin a how-to course off of what he has learned in the process of writing that book and his blog, "The Choice," and to integrate video clips of some of the people he follows in the books as well as of two high-profile admissions officers.

The videos of those admissions officers, Ted Spencer, director of admissions at the University of Michigan, and Eric Furda, the dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, are probably the best aspects of the course. Seeing and hearing these deans describe their philosophies in video clips is better than just reading a transcript of their words, in this case, because it helps give you a feel for their institutions. Also helpful are videos of guidance counselor Ralph Figueroa's advice on college essays (he was the college admissions officer at Wesleyan University whom Jacques Steinberg trailed for a year and reported on in his book The Gatekeepers).

If you have read The Gatekeepers, it will also be neat to "meet" Ralph Figueroa, Sharon Merrow-Cuseo, and Becca Janol, people you feel you've gotten to know in the book. To see and hear them speaking in video clips, and offering advice, adds another dimension to what you have learned from them and about them in the book.

In the course, Jacques Steinberg also often refers viewers back to relevant columns and blog entries in The Choice. For example: "For more information on how Ivy League and other highly selective colleges make their decisions, I direct you to two weeklong Q. and A.’s that appeared on The Choice. One was with Mr. Furda [of Penn]. The other was with William Fitzsimmons, the longtime dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard."

After a series of video clips from Dean Ted Spencer at the University of Michigan, Steiberg adds, "To read a bit more from the perspective of the dean of another public university admissions office, check out a weeklong reader Q. and A. that appeared on The Choice with Michael Barron, the director of admissions at the University of Iowa."

Copyright 2011 Jennifer Dees