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

by Rachel Toor

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312302355
• ISBN13: 9780312302351
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Not a cookbook - a refreshing and honest account

Many important events in all of our lives are decided subjectively and sometimes capriciously - being hired into a job, getting elected, being selected to join a club. Getting into a highly selective college seems to be another one of these little joys - there is no exact science to who gets in and who doesn't. Toor brings this home in a powerful way by interjecting personal aspects of her life - at the end of the book, you feel like a real, fallable, and interesting (sure, maybe a little atypical) person is reading your childrens' applications. It feels to me like her account is genuine, honest, and insightful. I take away from the book a new outlook on the process, one that will help me honestly explain to my teenager that if she doesn't get into her school of choice that it may not be because she isn't good enough, but maybe because of some other human (arbitrary) factor. The book has prompted me to rethink what is important about college, and realize that my child might not be best served by going to a highly selective college. The book isn't a how-to get into college book, but rather is a how-to think about what's important in selecting schools. How-to books are a dime-a-dozen, books that change how you think are rarities. Toor's book is definitely a keeper. Glad it was recommended to me.

More Memoir Than Expose

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.

Reveals More Than She Thinks

This book is extremely informative. It explains the admissions process at a selective school and clarifies many admission decisions which at first glance appear arbitrary (ie. why the valedictorian isn't accepted). At the same time, it paints the Duke Admissions team as a group of rude, arrogant and somewhat racist individuals. The author, however, is herself rude, arrogant and racist in a condescending way. I particularly dislike the "nicknames" she uses for less than stellar applicants ("stinky," "dull," "jerk," etc.).