Anyone here read the The Gatekeepers? Fascinating behind the scenes look at the admissions process

[Anonymous]

It's out of date now, landscape has certainly changed in 20 years. But the constants that the book touched on:

-- Minorities good, esp if they have good math scores.

-- Full pay rich kids to the top of the list, esp full pay black/latino.

-- Assuming you have the benchmarks, be "quirky" to get noticed.

-- If you narc on your friends for eating pot brownies at school you might get off Cornell's waitlist. Dream big.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I just looked up this book The Gatekeepers. Published in 2003 based on spending 1999-2000 with the admissions people.

You know that's an 18 year old experience now - nearly 2 decades out of date, right?

Have there been any updates or more recent insights? Things have changed a GREAT deal since then.

Can you be specific?

Other than students applying to more colleges each (thanks primarily due to common app) and higher standardized test scores (thanks to test prep becoming the norm) I don't think much has changed at all.

The year the book was written, Wesleyan had 6,955 applicants and accepted 27% of them.
Last year, Wesleyan had 12,453 applicants and accepted 16% of them.

The landscape is entirely different.

Yes, students applying to more colleges each, due primarily to the common app (and to facts like Wesleyan, in particular, requires no supplemental essays, making it an easy one to add). Kids can still only enroll at one school.

What has fundamentally changed about the process of selection and class building?

As far as I can tell, not much. Book is still very valuable. And there are many others like it written more recently, and none of them describe a process that is much different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I just looked up this book The Gatekeepers. Published in 2003 based on spending 1999-2000 with the admissions people.

You know that's an 18 year old experience now - nearly 2 decades out of date, right?

Have there been any updates or more recent insights? Things have changed a GREAT deal since then.

Can you be specific?

Other than students applying to more colleges each (thanks primarily due to common app) and higher standardized test scores (thanks to test prep becoming the norm) I don't think much has changed at all.

The year the book was written, Wesleyan had 6,955 applicants and accepted 27% of them.
Last year, Wesleyan had 12,453 applicants and accepted 16% of them.

The landscape is entirely different.

The landscape is different just due to #? The common app. The process is still the same - if you are URM/legacy/$$$/connections/first gen/ - you have a leg up. The rest - it i is a lottery system - you may get lucky and you may not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought Crazy U was really bad. The guy is so pessimistic and he plays into parents' fears instead of helping to make the process more clear. Because he worked for the Bush White House, he gets access to some people that we wouldn't, but he doesn't do anything but make you think you're screwed in this process. Who needs to read a book like that?

If you have one kid who went through the process already, you'll read it knowing that some of the events he describes are made up, positioned to be earlier in the college process, or exaggerated.

He describes UVA as a "big state U" when it's nowhere near OSU, Michigan, Wisconsin, or other schools that actually should get that label.

UVA is an R-1 university with 21K+ students. What are your criteria for "Big State U?" Sure OSU, Michigan and Wisconsin are bigger but so what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The landscape is different just due to #? The common app. The process is still the same - if you are URM/legacy/$$$/connections/first gen/ - you have a leg up. The rest - it i is a lottery system - you may get lucky and you may not.

That does not sound very different from what the book says.

And BTW I believe while it appears to be a lottery it really is not.

Not saying nothing has changed -- but definitely saying nothing has changed that makes the book any less valuable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I just looked up this book The Gatekeepers. Published in 2003 based on spending 1999-2000 with the admissions people.

You know that's an 18 year old experience now - nearly 2 decades out of date, right?

Have there been any updates or more recent insights? Things have changed a GREAT deal since then.

Can you be specific?

Other than students applying to more colleges each (thanks primarily due to common app) and higher standardized test scores (thanks to test prep becoming the norm) I don't think much has changed at all.

The year the book was written, Wesleyan had 6,955 applicants and accepted 27% of them.
Last year, Wesleyan had 12,453 applicants and accepted 16% of them.

The landscape is entirely different.

Yes, students applying to more colleges each, due primarily to the common app (and to facts like Wesleyan, in particular, requires no supplemental essays, making it an easy one to add). Kids can still only enroll at one school.

What has fundamentally changed about the process of selection and class building?

As far as I can tell, not much. Book is still very valuable. And there are many others like it written more recently, and none of them describe a process that is much different.

When the book was written, Wesleyan had to produce 5077 rejections (73% of 6955 applicants).
Last year, they had to produce 10460 rejections (84% of 12453).

Do you think the Admissions Office is spending as much time carefully reviewing applications now as they did when they had half as many to read? The reality is that unless you're hooked, there's no way your application is getting past a cursory initial review unless you meet concrete statistical measures that are much higher than they were 18 years ago. So that's the biggest change in the landscape.

But if you can meet that lofty standard, I think the book's insights still apply. The big takeaway for me was that your kid needs to distinguish him/herself in a way that can be quickly summarized by the Admissions Committee -- "Opera Boy" or "Mountain Climber Girl" or whatever. Something that makes you somehow stand out in the mass of 4.0/1500 SAT kids that make it past the initial weeding out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

When the book was written, Wesleyan had to produce 5077 rejections (73% of 6955 applicants).
Last year, they had to produce 10460 rejections (84% of 12453).

Do you think the Admissions Office is spending as much time carefully reviewing applications now as they did when they had half as many to read? The reality is that unless you're hooked, there's no way your application is getting past a cursory initial review unless you meet concrete statistical measures that are much higher than they were 18 years ago. So that's the biggest change in the landscape.

But if you can meet that lofty standard, I think the book's insights still apply. The big takeaway for me was that your kid needs to distinguish him/herself in a way that can be quickly summarized by the Admissions Committee -- "Opera Boy" or "Mountain Climber Girl" or whatever. Something that makes you somehow stand out in the mass of 4.0/1500 SAT kids that make it past the initial weeding out.

Yes, I do believe they spend the same amount of time on qualified applicants. Maybe less time on auto-rejects? But the process is the same, and the fact that there are more applications has not changed that, as far as I can tell. I am open to the idea that it has, but until I see evidence or testimonials that it has I do not believe it. My edition has a recent epilogue that states: "When I asked Nancy (Meislahn, Wes Dean of Adm.) what a reader of The Gatekeepers might find different in the office in 2012, she said 'Applicant's expectations have changed dramatically, and we have stepped up to meet them". Nothing about the process itself changing or anything else devaluing reading it.

Your insightful take-away ("Opera Boy" et. al.) from the book apparently was revelatory at the time, and as you point out still valuable today.

[Anonymous]

I concur with the PP who says very few apps are actually getting read these days. The easiest way to get you app read? Click no on the "Do you need financial aid?" question. Need blind is totally BS. If you need aid from a great college you better be an underrepresented minority, foster kid, or from a weird geography.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I concur with the PP who says very few apps are actually getting read these days. The easiest way to get you app read? Click no on the "Do you need financial aid?" question. Need blind is totally BS. If you need aid from a great college you better be an underrepresented minority, foster kid, or from a weird geography.

I worked in admissions at a need blind New England liberal arts college, and we read all applications. It made ZERO impact to the admissions decision whether an applicant applies for financial aid. In fact, the financial aid office was separate from the admissions office. This is also true at other competing colleges including the Ivies. Granted not all colleges that claim to be need blind truly are...Colleges that have large endowments tend to be true to their word when they say they are need blind.