Beyond the College Guides

Here’s an annotated bibliography for parents and other caring adults seeking a broader perspective on the contemporary collegiate scene in the United States.

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

Toor, Rachel. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001.

By her own confession, Toor was over-qualified, or oddly fit for the position of admissions officer at Duke University which she held for three years. Needless to say, she left the job and decided to write a book about her experiences: the good, the bad, and the funny. Toor’s not unbiased, but her conclusions are generally confirmed by Steinberg, who is, for my money, the clearer thinker and better writer. However, if you want the racy version....

Binge: Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and Excess

Seaman, Barrett. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005.

Blame it on reality television programming if you will, but the market for books on college life has acquired an unmistakably voyeuristic gaze in recent years. If you’re looking for a reliable overview of contemporary student life, don’t waste your time or money on Alexandra Robbins’ Pledged or Rebekah Nathan’s My Freshman Year. I recommend going straight to Seaman’s insightful, balanced portrayal of a dozen of North America’s most selective colleges and universities. A thirty-year veteran reporter for Time and a trustee of elite Hamilton College, the author spent two years living in campus housing and participating in many facets of student life on the twelve institutions in his study. A careful reading of the text leads to the conclusion that the excess referenced in the title is actually an overabundance of opportunism: a rather chilling realization.   

College Rankings Exposed: The Art of Getting a Quality Education in the 21st Century

Boyer, Paul. Lawrenceville, NJ: Thomson/Peterson’s, 2003.

Boyer brings truly impressive credentials to his stated task. He holds a doctoral degree in education theory and policy studies from Penn State, and his father, Ernest Boyer, is a former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Sadly, the text fails to demonstrate the full power of its author’s potential, and I cannot help but wonder whether the strength of Boyer’s argument was not diluted by the publisher, a major player in the college guide book business. The titular expose of the college rating game is the subject of only the first chapter. Also of interest is the fourth chapter, with its criteria for quality education that would be as difficult for a thoughtful reader to counter as to operationalize.

College Unranked: Affirming Educational Values in College Admissions

Thacker, Lloyd, editor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.

A former high school guidance counselor, Thacker is the founder of the non-profit organization, The Education Conservancy. An outspoken proponent of college admissions reform, he’s currently very much in demand on the lecture and consulting circuits. The volume that he has edited is more prescriptive than descriptive, but it may signal changes for admissions policies in the not-to-distant future.

The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite

Avery, Christopher, Andrew Fairbanks and Richard Zeckhauser. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.

This is the definitive statement on the politics of early admissions, from three authors stunningly well-positioned to undertake the study. A wry sense of humor lightens a presentation that is weighed down with figures and tables and statistics. By the time you make it to the seventh chapter, you may actually have begun to feel like the hypothetical Martian stranded in a Vegas casino. Avery et al don’t paint a pretty picture, but in the arena of college admissions, ignorance is not bliss.

The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College

Steinberg, Jacques. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.

The national education correspondent for The New York Times, Steinberg spent the better part of 1999 hard on the heels of one of the admissions officers at Wesleyan University. He supplemented this approach by following the fortunes of graduating seniors at a prestigious private school in Los Angeles. This is an eye-opening, or eye-popping, look at the inner workings of college admissions. Reading this account, I continually asked myself why Ralph, the likable admissions guy, stuck with his job. Answer: he didn’t. Can’t say that I blame him, but I highly recommend Steinberg’s book.

The Launching Years: Strategies for Parenting from Senior Year to College Life

Kastner, Laura S. and Jennifer Wyatt. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002.

Kastner is a mother, a faculty member at the University of Washington and a practicing clinical psychologist. Also a mother, Wyatt is a writer with a strong interest in parenting. Together, the two women have composed a highly accessible and uncommonly sensitive volume. I have the odd sensation that the authors were racing to complete the last couple chapters, which read more like an extended outline than a finished work, but this is a minor weakness in an otherwise useful volume.

Letting Go: A Parent’s Guide to Understanding the College Years, fourth edition

Coburn, Karen Levin and Madge Lawrence Treeger. New York: Quill (HarperCollins), 2003.

Coburn and Treeger are both professional staff at Washington University in St. Louis. Together, they offer workshops nationwide for parents of emerging adults. The chatty prose contains more anecdotes than I, personally, care to read. Running a hundred and fifty pages longer than Kastner and Wyatt, this book comes into its own with an appendix of resources for parents and students.

The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges–and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates

Golden, Daniel. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.

Golden is a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer for The Wall Street Journal, and he pulls no punches in this trenchant expose of the current practices that preserve the educational capital of the American upper class. There’s not much that the parent of an aspiring college entrant can do to alter these policies in the near future, and knowing about them may only add fuel to the fire of admissions frustration. On the other hand, it may help to appreciate the obstacles facing qualified college applicants who do not happen to hail from the wealthiest one percent of American families.

Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much

Ehrenberg, Ronald G. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Economist Ehrenberg is the director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. His book more than answers the question posed in the title, probably in greater detail than the lay reader will desire. What one reviewer referred to as Ehrenberg’s “war stories” do enliven the exposition, but these delicious insider accounts are grounded in the organizational idiosyncracies of his home institution (my own alma mater and a quirky place probably representative of no other university on the planet). The general claims, however, are well supported, with depressing conclusions all around.