WHO GETS IN AND WHY

From the New York Times bestselling expert on higher education, this is a deep dive into the American college admissions process to examine the choices made both by prospective students and those in the college admissions ecosystem, from guidance counselors to marketers to rankers to SAT preppers to admissions officers.

For heartbroken teenagers rejected by their dream school and their frustrated parents, the college search, rather than a rite-of-passage, has turned into a nightmare. For many, college admissions feels like a zero-sum game. One student gets in, another loses out. It's a perception that grows stronger at the more selective institutions, where seats are few and applications from qualified students sometimes drown admissions officers.

In WHO GETS IN AND WHY, Jeffrey Selingo, a higher education expert and the New York Times bestselling author of There Is Life After College, pulls back the curtain on the sometimes bizarre inner workings of the college admissions process. With in-depth reporting from the 2018-2019 academic year, which includes tracking select students and their parents through the journey and which draws on embedded interviews with high school guidance counselors, college marketers, rankers, SAT preppers, admissions officers, and faculty, Selingo reveals the truth about college admissions: it's not about the applicant, it's about the college.

While many like to paint college admissions as the linchpin of meritocracy, WHO GETS IN AND WHY illustrates that it never was, and likely never will be. Schools are driven by a confluence of competing priorities, which include how they rank in the pecking order of higher education. That status often dictates how they choose to compete, meaning that questions about fairness will continue to be debated for a long time.

There is hope though. Once the process is understood, it can be, if not mastered, then at least navigated for a good outcome.

Jeffrey Selingo is an expert on higher education, award-winning journalist, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, and his writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. He is a special advisor to the president of Arizona State University and a visiting scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Selingo is the bestselling author of There Is Life After College and College (Un)Bound. He lives in Washington, DC with his family.