There are high school kids who would kill to sit where you are right now.
On the "Gold Coast" of Connecticut, parents are paying $5,000 for 40 hours of coaching to raise their child's scores on the Scholastic Achievement Test.
In New York City, North Carolina and London they are paying consultants $2,500 to better their chance of getting in schools like Dartmouth.
One applicant tried to impress Dartmouth admissions by baking a cookie three feet wide, decorating it with green and white icing and sending it special delivery to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg.
"It didn't work," Furstenberg said.
Every year it gets harder to get in -- this year Dartmouth accepted only 19 percent of 11,398 applicants.
In the words of Ben Mason, an independent college counselor in Burlington, Vt., "Nobody's getting in Dartmouth anymore."
In a world where many people believe an Ivy League diploma is the key to power, prestige and, perhaps, a Mercedes-Benz, Dartmouth has the luxury of not only accepting, but also rejecting the very brightest. Every freshman class is 1,000 points of light.
With the chance of getting into Dartmouth declining and anxiety over college admissions rising, high school students are wondering what it takes to gain admission to a school like Dartmouth.
There is no easy way in. But Furstenberg revealed the closest thing to a formula for success -- be brilliant. And be intensely passionate about something.
What students have in common
If you are a Dartmouth student, you are here because Furstenberg decided to admit you. He is ultimately responsible for all admissions decisions.
And the one thing shared by everyone, Furstenberg admitted, is an ability to succeed academically. Students admitted to Dartmouth typically come from the top 10th of one percent of high school students.
The students Dartmouth admitted this year have a mean verbal SAT score of 715 and a mean math score of 721. The national average on each section is 500. But students who apply to Dartmouth need more than a mean SAT score, Furstenberg said.
"There are loads of people with 800s now," he said. "The best colleges are looking for the same thing -- the brightest, most engaged and energetic individuals we can find."
Some high school college counselors say Dartmouth can afford to be choosy.
Thomas Parker, the director of college counseling at Woodberry Forest, a boarding school in Virginia, said two of his students are on Dartmouth's waiting list.
"They are kids that wind up being viewed as a couple more of the army of really bright, really hard-working, capable kids who apply," he said. "I don't mean for that to sound disparaging of what they have accomplished, but the applicant pool is deep and strong."
Associate Director of Admissions Ginger Miller said the paramount factor in a decision is the extent to which an applicant took advantage of available opportunities. A student with sterling grades in challenging courses is a good candidate.
Furstenberg said SAT scores are an important indicator of talent. But said his office tends to de-emphasize their importance.
"I think in some respects we are more open-minded than our peer institutions and are less driven by the numbers," he said.
But Terence Giffen, the college director at the Choate-Rosemary Hall boarding school in Connecticut, said when Dartmouth "looks at G.P.A. and test scores, maybe they put more weight on that than other schools."
Giffen said this trend is visible not only in whom the College admits, but also in the admissions office's letters to high school counselors.
Miller said the SAT is only one measure of a student's ability.
"It is part of the academic profile. The profile has so many parts," she said. "There is the SAT test, the [advanced placement] test, other national testing."
"The SAT is only a part. The most important thing is the transcript, and not just G.P.A. and rank," she said.
Furstenberg said college rankings, such as those published annually by U.S. News and World Report magazine, have made schools examine SAT scores more closely.
"We have all been driven to do more of that than we like by all these college guides and rankings," he said.
The recentering of the SAT in 1995 changed the admissions game.
"Now everybody is criticizing us for not paying enough attention [to SAT scores]," he said. "Imagine someone with double 800s calling to complain" about being rejected.
As Mason said, "if you are an admissions officer, you're job is not a happy lot."
Ideal candidate
The whiz-kid who could do everything, who could throw a football and play the bassoon, used to be a shoo-in to Dartmouth, Mason said.
But in 1996, doing everything is not enough.
"No longer are they trying to admit well-rounded kids," said Terence Giffen, the college director at the Choate-Rosemary Hall boarding school. "They are trying to admit a well rounded community with lots of bumps and spikes."
But Furstenberg said "well-roundedness is alive and well."
Admitted students tend to be uniformly excellent, but with something unique in their background and one great passion, he said.
Parker said one of the students Dartmouth accepted from Woodberry Forest has an idyllic background for college admissions: he is a Bosnian refugee who speaks several languages and has an excellent SAT score.
"He comes from one of those places in the world that is a flash-point," he said. "He is very articulate about what is going on in his homeland."
Furstenberg said unusual backgrounds are only important to the extent they generate "raw human energy and character."
"Students who have overcome considerable adversity, difficult illness, difficult family lives or a particularly weak high school" stand out, he said. "There is a whole range of things we take into account to measure the level of one's accomplishments and potential."
But most admitted students stand out by virtue of a primary intellectual passion.
"We are much more likely now to take students not so well-rounded, but who are good at something," he said. Students "who have devoted themselves to it and have a passion for it."
Dodge Johnson, an independent college counselor in Malvern, Penn., and former college provost at DePauw University in Chicago, said Dartmouth "will take the kids who are ... splicing genes in the basement or whose second novel is at auction."
Shelley Arakawa '96, who interviews prospective students for the admissions office, said she likes to ask students whether there is any topic they could talk about for three weeks. She said it is important for her to know whether a prospective is passionate about something.
Furstenberg said admissions officers judge the degree to which a student is intellectually passionate more than the direction of that passion.
He said the rare prospective who is passionate about translating Catullus is no more likely to gain admittance than the legions of students who are passionate about going to medical school.
"Students at age 17 and 18 are still in the process of development," he said, and although their passions may change, it is important they demonstrate the capacity to pursue an intellectual issue in-depth.
Furstenberg said he is partial to academic leaders and risk-takers, such as a student who revives a defunct school newspaper. Students willing to challenge society's expectations also stand out.
"Dartmouth has been criticized for having too many people who want to be successful within the confines of the system," he said. He said Dartmouth is more likely to admit a student who challenges those confines.
But some students who are admitted do not exercise intellectual leadership or revolutionary tendencies.
"Sometimes they are wonderful people who don't aspire to be in the limelight ... but a teacher will say, 'this is the most thoughtful, compassionate student," Furstenberg said. He said a shy student with fabulous essays and excellent grades might be admitted if, for instance, a teacher described him as "young philosopher."
Associate Director of Admissions Stephen Silver said, "We're looking for people with something to contribute. There are incredibly wonderful quiet people out there who do make contributions."
Furstenberg said officers narrow the field to brilliant, passionate students and students who can contribute to the community.
"Then we look at other information to make sure we're not dealing with the Unabomber," he said.
Furstenberg said admissions officers "rely on the integrity of teachers and counselors' [recommendations]. If there is any antisocial behavior or extremely unusual behavior, we would hear about it."
Extraordinary talents, backgrounds
There are applicants who never spliced a gene in the basement, and others who are not articulate in four languages about the strife in their homelands.
But perhaps they benefited from being a student who has what Dartmouth needs.
Admissions officers consider "the diversity that is brought to the community. That can take many shapes -- a talented athlete, a legacy child, the minority enrollment issue," Giffen said.
As a guest on a talk show on New Hampshire public radio earlier this month, Furstenberg said he likes to admit a class that looks like America.
The College does not use a quota system for minority admission, although minority students are given special consideration, Furstenberg said on the show.
But he is adamant that no unqualified student is admitted.
"Every student that applies to Dartmouth is expected to meet the same criteria and goes through exactly the same process," he said.
Miller used a metaphor to explain the College's reasoning.
"Five people are running a marathon and end up running the race in the same time. But they run over different terrain. The person who had the hardest terrain is the most impressive," she said.
Athletes also get extra attention. Coaches submit lists of students they want, ranked by athletic merit. Furstenberg said admissions officers use this list along with an athlete's essays, transcript and recommendations.
Relatives of Dartmouth alumni tend to have better luck in the admissions game.
"All things being equal, being a legacy gives you a plus," Furstenberg said. "There is a long history of that here and at other places. It is a way of responding to the 'Dartmouth family,' and there is a fund-raising dimension to it as well."
"Legacies comprise about 7 percent of the student body here. At Yale, it is 15 percent," Furstenberg said. "We turn down many more [legacies] than we take."
Giffen said because of the College's interest in diversity, fewer students are admitted from boarding schools
"It could be they take the first generation college kid rather than the kid who has had a prep school education," he said.
Furstenberg agreed.
"I think boarding schools have always emphasized that they create well-rounded students," he said. "That notion doesn't sit as well when we have this large, competitive national pool."
"If you go back in history ... Dartmouth had always taken people from Deerfield and Andover. They were feeder schools," he said. Today "those places have no particular prerogatives."
Two-thirds of admitted students this year come from a public high school. Furstenberg said, "I think it represents our interest in selecting the best individual candidates wherever they come from."
Furstenberg defended the College's practice of admitting a large number of students from Stuyvesant High School, a New York City magnet school. More than 20 students in the Class of 1999 have a Stuyvesant diploma.
"I bet those 20 people were all very different from each other," he said. "New York City is probably the most diverse city in the United States. I think Stuy reflects that."
"We look at all these students as individuals," he said.
Admissions officers say the strategy is working.
Furstenberg said visiting college counselors have told him "the Dartmouth student body seems so much more alive and energetic. They are doing more things. It is more interesting here."
"The proof is in the pudding, as they say," he said.
The psychosis of selectivity
The harder it is to get in, the more desperate the students become.
Every year, high school seniors send Furstenberg applications, videotapes, homemade books, brownies, cakes and helium balloons -- all trying to get an edge in the college admissions game.
"We have people who write essays in the form of a poem," he said. "Sometimes I get mail at home from kids. It might say, 'I'm writing you at home because I really, really, really want to get in.'"
"That doesn't really work," he said.
Howard Greene '59, an independent college counselor from Connecticut and former admissions officer at Princeton, said applicants feel obliged to try clever gimmicks because they and their parents approach selective colleges with hysteria and paranoia.
"People are just frenzied," he said. "People in this crazy economy, everybody feeling there is no security. The only thing that seems a constant is that a quality education seems the best bet for the future."
College admissions has become an enormous industry, with enterprising publishers, consultants and charlatans profiting from the panic.
The Dartmouth Bookstore has shelves filled with titles like "The College Admissions Game," "Essays that Worked," "Getting Your Child Into College" and "Scaling the Ivy Wall," which Greene wrote.
The introduction of the book "Cracking the SAT" typifies what high school students are sometimes told.
"Your ability to take the SAT could have a significant impact on the course of your life ... Most admissions officers won't understand how to interpret the scores you send them, but this won't stop them from speculating freely about your intelligence and even your personality on the basis of how you do," it states.
"The test's effect can even carry over into the years beyond college," it continues.
Furstenberg called the remark "a gross overstatement and simplification."
"We look at too much other material and information for tests to play that great a role," he said.
Newsweek magazine, National Public Radio, The New York Times, the Cable News Network and the three networks have all examined the "new admissions game" or the "right" schools in the past weeks, Greene said.
Greene was recently featured in an article in The New York Times, which described how he helped a Wilton, Conn., woman gain admittance to Dartmouth.
The article shook the college counseling industry because it questioned whether counselors are enabling students to manipulate the college admissions process.
Ben Mason, a Burlington, Vt., college counselor who recently went to a trade-meeting in Arizona, said the whole industry is aware of the article about Greene.
"Everybody was talking about it," he said.
The woman Greene helped, Elizabeth Morgan, acted on Greene's advice in order to get into the best college possible.
She transferred to Choate Rosemary Hall boarding school upon Green's recommendation, according to the article.
"During a third visit to Dartmouth, Elizabeth followed Mr. Greene's advice and visited the school's biology department, to demonstrate her initiative and interest," the article states.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, Greene said he advised Morgan to stress her interest in science, because it would make her more attractive to the admissions office.
"She didn't know, as a female, [interest in science] is very special," he said.
Greene sent a letter of recommendation to Furstenberg, the article states. Morgan will be attending Dartmouth Fall term.
Greene said he was not entirely pleased with the article.
"It was fantastic press, but it bothered me," he said. "It made [the firm] sound like some kind of broker, and we are not."
Rather, Greene said his business mostly involves helping students find a college where they will be happy.
Furstenberg said it is almost impossible to tell whether a student is paying a college counselor to improve his chances. Even more difficult to discern are the students who have paid for SAT coaching.
"It complicates things," he said. "The people who get special coaching are probably the same kids who have other advantages as well."
Although most independent college counselors are honest, some are profiting from deception.
"There are bad guys," Johnson said. "There are people who will write students' essays for them, and who will cheerfully lie if asked."
Johnson told the story of a Connecticut college counselor who guaranteed students admission to Brown University for $1,500. If a student was denied admission, he received a full refund.
Almost none of the students were accepted. But because a few extraordinary students were accepted, the counselor made a nice profit, Johnson said.
The losers in the game are those students who think they will only be happy in a selective college, he said.
"Everyone is ranked. People are paying more attention to the rankings than their own best interest," Johnson said. "I think everyone should choose a college that feels right for them."
All of the college counselors interviewed said an Ivy League education is hardly a formula for success.
"Most people make money at something because they are good at it," Johnson said.
Furstenberg voiced a similar sentiment.
"Sadly, status prestige and elitism still appeals to people," he said. "Going to an Ivy League college is one of the few things that people can do at ... the age of 18 that may have some influence on their future."
"It is an overblown perspective, but it makes my job easier," he said.
