Book Review - “Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions - By Jeffrey Selingo

In Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions, New York Times best-selling author and award-winning jounalist, Jeffrey Selingo, provides readers with an insider’s view of the admissions process at three highly selective universities and the inner workings of what transpires behind the scenes of an often enigmatic and unpredictable process. Selingo, a regular contributing writer to the NYT, Washington Post, and the Atlantic, who has reported on higher education for over two decades, was given unprecedented access to gatekeepers at Emory, Davidson, and University of Washington, allowing readers to effectively unlock the conference room doors and take a seat at the admissions committee table to observe admissions officers maneuver the fates of thousands of applicants in an often murky and mysterious process.

Selingo goes behind the scenes with industry leaders, admissions committee officials, high school counselors, college rankers, and several applicants themselves to unmask the hidden truths behind the factors that come in to play when making difficult admission decisions. The book focuses primarily on the elite and more selective institutions that attract tens of thousands of highly qualified applicants to fill only a small percentage of spots. The merit-based academic criteria that once seemed to be the gold-standard at these institutions, are challenged outright as Selingo exposes the attempts of colleges to climb up the rankings to raise their profiles and draw more potential applicants, thereby reducing the percentage of accepted students. Selingo succinctly points out that college admissions decisions, more often than not, have more to do with the college’s agenda and needs than the applicant’s qualifications. These institutions, he argues, are ultimately "big businesses" spending an estimated $10 billion annually on recruiting students. Therefore, admissions decisions are often governed by a variety of factors that include a university’s need for money, diversity, legacies, athletes, and whether a student will enroll if accepted.

Selingo places colleges in to two distinct categories of "buyers" and "sellers."  Sellers, he argues, are the "haves" of admissions typically holding a brand name that signals prestige in rank and reputation. The "buyers" on the other hand, are considered the "have-nots" of admissions. Buyers lack the name, prestige and ranking of the sellers making it harder to recruit students. While sellers will offer financial assistance only to exceptional students who truly need it, buyers will often offer generous discounts on their tuition using what "is euphemistically called merit scholarships" to fill their seats. Selingo accurately points out how the elite and selective universities are inundated with highly qualified candidates from all over the country. Students firmly seated at the top of their classes, some with perfect SAT/ACT scores and straight As, from both public and private high schools are spending "months even years, crafting a college application" hoping to gain access to one of the few coveted spots at the country’s most elite institutions. Many of these applications are reviewed in "just eight minutes" or less before going in to a “deny” or “reject” pile with so many others. Selingo further reveals that applicants are not "judged by the same yardstick" despite what the public is lead to believe. Many highly qualified students are rejected in favor of students with lower scores for various reasons ranging from a lack of evidence of leadership or perhaps a failure to show perseverance in the face of hardship. Colleges, he argues, are looking beyond the traditional merits once served as the barometer for entrance. Admissions standards, are not applied "consistently because they are applied in context." Top colleges that are receiving more applications than they can get through each year are ultimately looking to assemble or “shape” the perfect class of students. That class must be comprised of not only the strongest academically, but must also fulfill the need for athletes, legacies, minorities, the underserved, and those who can pay full price tuition.

Selingo ultimately advocates for students and parents alike to take control of the admissions process by deciding for themselves what is important. He encourages students to “broaden their search beyond the super selective schools” and to focus their attention on what they desire and intend to do in college, rather than where they want to go.  Elite institutions like Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford, he argues, “don’t have an exclusive claim on great educations.” 

Selingo provides some insight to students and parents who are left stumped when they seemingly did all that could be done to get in to their “dream” school only to receive the harsh reality that they’ve been denied admission. I found Selingo’s account to be a well-researched, eye-opening and revealing exposé of the inner workings of colleges and the admissions officials who sift through thousands of highly impressive applications and make the often heart breaking and difficult choices to reject a student who, by all accounts, is more than qualified for admission. With sincerity and candor, Selingo reveals the humanity behind both the applicants and the decision makers and the inevitable “tough choices” that need to be made. He shines a light on the greyer areas of money, rankings, and privilege that are often hidden from public view and may provide some form of resolution or comfort to those who are left wondering why their application didn’t survive the cut and what more they possibly could have done. As a parent of two who recently went through the college admissions process to many of the schools discussed in this book, I found it to be not only a fascinating read, but also an illuminating and enlightening account of what occurs behind-the-scenes at highly selective and elite institutions once that application is sent. For me personally, it provided a certain amount of closure to an otherwise ambiguous and imprecise process that left many unanswered and unsettling questions.