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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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