Jeffrey Selingo - Who gets in and why: A Year Inside College Admissions

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More Praise for WHO GETS IN AND WHY

Comprehensive and ultimately reassuring Anxious parents and students will be buoyed by this richly detailed and lucidly written guide.

Publishers Weekly

This is Selingos finest work. He pulls back the curtain on all the code words, awkward secrets, and noble hopes associated with college admissions today. Each chapter can help college-bound families turn confusion into clarity.

George Anders, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of You Can Do Anything and The Rare Find

A searing and sensitive look into the world of college admissions. Informed by a remarkable front-row view from the very rooms where it happens, this eye-opening book offers insights that will inspire, enrage, and enlighten.

Ned Johnson, coauthor of The Self-Driven Child and president and founder of PrepMatters

If youve ever wondered why applying to college has become such an all-consuming process and why so many students and families become unhinged by it, Jeffrey Selingo has the answers. He brings to the table both a journalists instinct for a great story and a fathers concern for the ways the process can consume students emotional lives. With this true insiders guide, youll make it through the application process without losing your retirement savings, your sanity, your dignity, and possibly even your dog. You need this book, and you need it now.

Caitlin Flanagan, staff writer at the Atlantic and author of Girl Land

Very accessible and quite accurate Selingos backstage view of the process at Emory is particularly strong. He adeptly pinpoints how an institutions priorities, goals, and needs cause equally deserving applicants to frequently meet with different outcomes. This book will be a great resource for parents.

Rick Hazelton, director of college advising,The Hotchkiss School

Selingo has managed to lift the veil from the inner sanctum. From the committee rooms he has penetrated come stories of compassion for students balanced by institutional priorities and mandates. Who Gets In and Why offers a great insiders view, making a complex process much easier to understand.

Robert Massa, former dean of enrollment, Johns Hopkins University

Selingo addresses the tyranny of selective admissions and its inordinate social and emotional impact on the more than 90 percent of students who enroll in nonselective schools. He depicts the agony and the ecstasy of the selective admissions process, questions why were all hostage to it, and offers insightful ways to avoid getting caught in the madness. Bravo!

Deborah Quazzo, managing partner of GSV Advisors

An important book that shines a clarifying light into the mystifying corners of the college admissions process. Jeff Selingo gives students and their families much-needed perspective on how things really work behind the scenes.

Jill Madenberg, author of Love the Journey to College

Also by Jeffrey Selingo

College (Un)bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students

There Is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-1629-3

ISBN 978-1-9821-1631-6 (ebook)

For Heather

T he spring of a high schoolers junior year often serves as the staging ground for the college search that evolves over the following twelve months. Its when college-bound teenagers typically go on their initial campus tours and first take the SAT or ACT. Its when students are closing in on the summit of high schoolwith a schedule full of college prep classes and myriad sports and extracurricular activities, volunteer work, and part-time jobs.

But for the high school Class of 2021, the spring of their junior year was anything but normal. Over the course of several weeks in March 2020, schools across the United States and much of the world shut down because of the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Within a month, schools in most states had shifted to online learning for the remainder of the academic year, with teachers grading (mainly by pass/fail) in a virtual learning environment without precedent. The College Board canceled several testing dates for the SAT, displacing nearly a million juniors who had planned to take the exam for the first time. The ACT was also canceled. Advanced Placement tests were moved online and shortened substantially to forty-five minutes. Virtual open houses replaced the campus tour.

For the Class of 2021, the spring of their junior year turned into one big asterisk on their high school record. At the time, I was putting the final touches on this book, which had followed the admissions process of students who at that moment were completing their first year of college. In various forums, I began receiving hundreds of questions from high school juniors, their parents, and counselors about how the widespread cancellation of so much would impact the college admissions process the following year for their soon-to-be seniors.

How would colleges judge applicants who didnt have multiple opportunities to take the SAT/ACT? How would they weigh grade point averages with a semester of pass/fail grades? How would colleges recruit students without visiting high schools or offering in-person campus tours?