Get Access Admissions Confidential: An Insider's Account Of The Elite College Selection Process Scripted By Rachel Toor Presented As Publication Copy

read into the inner workings of admissions offices of private colleges, Also, vaguely depressing when you realize the absolute futility of it all, Something excellent to give high school juniors and seniors to read, Very useful insights into the elite college admissions process, I liked the personal anecdotes about high schools students that the author met during her time in the admissions office at Duke, There are some great examples

of admissions essays, which won their authors a place on the Duke admit list, She gets a lot of things right! There are hundreds of books available that coach kids on writing college application essays, improving SAT scores and trying to beat the admissions system.
Admissions Confidential is a definitive look at why those books don't work, Toor lifts the veil on a process that anxious parents and high school students have never had decoded before, And they may be shocked to find out:

that elite colleges spend thousands of dollars recruiting students they will never admit
why some students at the bottom of their high school classes are admitted to top schools when the valedictorians are rejected
how pricey independent college counselors can hurt an applicant's chances
why admission to a top school depends on who reads your application
why the top of the class at a highperforming high school may end up at their second and third choice

Written in engaging firstperson and covering the entire admissions processfrom recruiting to enrollmentAdmissions Confidential is a year in the life of a college admissions officer.
This book may be beneficial to high school freshmen and sophomores, but would probably cause the average junior/senior collegebound student stress,

Rachel Toor had some good insights for what makes a strong candidate for elite colleges, and she also talked about how absurd admissions can sometimes be.
Three takeaways regarding insights wereapply early to college because there's a higher admittance rate for early decisiondon't write what you think admissions officers want to hear your story, your personality, your passions make for a more interesting essay and may supplement deficiencies elsewhere in your application andif you don't come from money then research exclusive societies based on academic merit and zealously work to be part of them.
Frequently, she cites examples of BWRK bright wellrounded kids who don't make the cut specifically for Duke University, but I suspect similar criteria are applicable for many others as well.


As she states in the beginning and the end, she worked in admissions for three years before she decided to quit and write a book about it.
She comes off as both sympathetic and discerning, Overall she seems unenthusiastic to have to dole out rejection letters to so many high school students, Reading her stories made me think that anyone working in admissions for too long has or develops a superiority complex, Rachel Toor doesn't come off this way, though, and her book makes for an interesting read,

of I liked it, didn't love it The stories become a little redundant, but it's written well and the information is good, If you're an ambitious parent looking for secrets to getting your child into the "right" schools, this is not the book for you, If you enjoyed "Race to Nowhere" and are concerned about high school kids becoming caught up in a rat race of activities pursued not out of passion, but out of fear of being left behind, then this glimpse into the somewhat arbitrary, all too imperfect system of college admissions will be intriguing.
I admire the author's conscience, openmindedness, awareness of privilege and bias, and genuine care for the young people she assisted, These sentences from the final chapter sum it up well: "There's a meaninglessness in the clarity with which some of these kids plan out their careers, "I want to be a lawyer" "I want to go into business, " They have no idea, usually, what it's like to work in these fields, What if they come to college and decide they love classical philology or the study of the Tibetan diaspora, or the history of Shaker furniture What if they come to college and are never exposed to disciplines they've never heard of, sticking instead to some illconceived childhood ambition" Everything Toor describes echoes the lament in "Race to Nowhere" that we are pushing kids to be wonderful college applicants at the expense of helping them grow into excellent college students.
Nothing too surprising, having worked in 'the biz', but an easy, fun read for those entering this mania for themselves or their children, Wellwritten read like a memoir with loads of details and inside scoop on the admissions process loved every bit, I have two kids in high school, one a senior this year, and this was informative, I also learned that I need to make sure they chill out a little through the whole process, . .

me too, come to think of it, This is a readable and okay little book with some interesting nuggets into the ruthlessness of the student selection process at a competitive college, The author, who worked at Duke University some ten years ago, tracks a year in her life in college admissions, Kinda. She reveals in the beginning that she has telescoped three years of work into one year in the name of creating a smooth narrative recreation of one admissions cycle.


I had two quibbles with the book, Ms. Toor interweaves pieces of her personal story into the trajectory of the year, Some of this is a helpful insight into her decisionmaking process but the rest is superfluous she runs, likes wine and Northern California, I think most readers will quickly skim through this stuff to get to the parts where she reveals why students are either admitted or denied,

My second problem was the author's smarty pants tone, As her coworkers point out at a meeting, while she purports to eschew the snobbism of elite northeastern prep schools, she nonetheless seems more charmed by their students than by others she meets.
She is also incredibly impressed by the intelligence of the Duke community, Yawn. While I appreciate her pulling back the curtain on the admissions process, her lack of grounding in realworld experience, gives her a parochial tone,

Not lots of surprises here, A kid needs very good grades, very good scores and some special talent to even make it past the first round of automatic rejects, The exceptions, of course, are for athletes separate process or those possessing rich philanthropic parents or better yet rich philanthropic parents who went to Duke, A student may get lucky and meet an admissions worker who takes a shine to him or her, but given a schoolvisit schedule Toor paints as hectic as well as somewhat haphazard, the chances of that happening are not so likely.
Also, if a student writes an essay about a book, they should choose something slightly obscure that isn't taught in every A, P high school course in the country, Turns out everyone makes the same picks,




Interesting look behind the scenes, An insiders account of the elite college selection process, Acute insight into elite colleges but more importantly I began musing on the power of the top universities, especially the ivy leagues, We attack conglomerates and have laws controlling them, not letting them hoard resources and wealth, Why shouldn't we do that with these universities who have the momentum of accumulated donations and investments to suck up much of what's left in the small pool of talented professors and students Market forces should not be the model that higher education follows in this regard.
Otherwise, another creeping aristocratic elite will form as in the military, finance, religion, etc, undermining our fundamental democratic system, I liked this better than The Overachievers, gripping and scary, but very cynical, Interesting insights, combined with Rachel Toor's excellent as always writing, If you have ever had any ties to admissions, I think this is a great book to read, There are times when it will crack you up, remind you days gone by, and also make you thankful for ever surviving the admissions process, regardless of the school.
Definitely worth reading. This book is overyears old so I am reading it more as Toor's memoir of her years working in elite college admissions than as any kind of advisory guide for the nervous parent.


I enjoy her style, She's clearly kind of mad at the whole admissions world, though, It's very telling that Toor, who got into her first choice college Yale leans towards the philosophy of not making such a godawful big deal about attending the ivies.
Though she was eager to attend Yale, and it almost certainly opened those doors of the Oxford U, Press and Duke to her, she is clear: "While I was there I never used the words "Yale" and "happy" in the same sentence, " p.In her YA novel, she directly attributes this sentiment to one of the main character's favorite teachers, I didn't think I'd want to read a book about someone owning a pig with her exboyfriend, but the little taste of it we get here sounds fun.
I'll be looking for it,

In the long run, how can our kids have happy lives Is going to the best college a critical ingredient If being a BWRK bright wellrounded kid is a drawback on your application so ordinary!, isn't it a plus in life

I teared up reading the excerpts she included from kids' personal essays.
Here's what I learned: no one else is going to think your kid is special, But you know your kids are amazing! So, be sure to love them up and make them strong so they can face the world that may or may not take the time to get to know them.


Not sure whether this made me feel better or worse about the college process, but it was definitely eyeopening, sitelink post a comment.