Former Assistant Director of Admissions Michele Hernandez '89 predicted she would not be "appreciated in admissions circles" once her new book, "A is for Admission: The Insider's Guide to Getting into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges," was published.
She was right.
All over the country, college-bound high school students as well as their guidance counselors are rushing to bookstores and are even special-ordering copies of her book, which claims to reveal many of the Ivy League's well-guarded admissions secrets.
But within many Ivy League admissions offices -- including that of Dartmouth, her former employer -- Hernandez's book is causing an uneasy uproar.
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg called Hernandez's book an "unfortunate and superficial view of the way admissions process works."
"It just makes the whole process look like a game where you psyche out and beat the opponent -- in this case, admissions officers," he said. "It's just a play to sell more books."
Cornell University's Director of Admissions Nancy Meislahn attacked the book, saying it was "poorly researched and contained many inaccuracies."
"It's basically a book of her opinions," Meislahn said. "She presents them as gospel truth and I'm afraid parents and students will take them as fact."
Meislahn said the book only describes the admissions process at Dartmouth and does not accurately reflect the process at other Ivy League colleges. Meislahn added Hernandez did not contact anyone within the Cornell office about her book.
Furstenberg said the book neglected to capture "the care, the thoroughness and the substance of the work that admissions officers do," and said he was especially angered by Hernandez's condescending generalization of admissions officers.
In her book, Hernandez writes most admissions officers are not "Ivy League hotshots" -- most have graduated from less prestigious colleges. "You will note the conspicuous absence of Rhodes scholars or well-known educators on admissions staff," she writes.
"It's bothersome to me that there's this arrogance that if you didn't go to an Ivy League college, you're not smart," Furstenberg said. "Many of our admissions officers went to graduate school, and they do the work because they are interested in education and because they care about Dartmouth."
Many admissions officers are also worried about the impact the book's emphasis on the Academic Index -- a number derived from a formula combining the applicant's standardized test scores and class rank -- will have on potential applicants with lower indexes.
Hernandez writes the AI is used solely by the Ivy League to simplify numerical statistics for the admissions officers since grading systems vary with different high schools. The book is complete with the exact AI formula as well as class rank conversion tables so applicants themselves can compute their own AI.
AIs range from one to 240 -- 240 being the highest possible index. For Dartmouth's Class of 2000, the average AI of applicants was 200, while the average AI of the matriculating class was 211, the book says.
"I just can't see how it's helpful to students," Yale University's Director of Admissions Margit Dahl said. "It will just make students worry and deter them from applying if their index comes out lower than the average."
However, Dahl added colleges have no reason to be "shocked" by Hernandez's decision to publish the AI formula.
Furstenberg himself told The Dartmouth last spring how the College uses the Academic Index to determine a cutoff for recruited athletes.
"All of the Ivies used the Academic Index primarily for the purposes of overseeing the admission of recruited athletes," Furstenberg said. "The book greatly overstates importance of the index in admissions."
However, despite the flurry of negativity surrounding Hernandez's book, admissions officers say Hernandez did not break any real "code of silence," as her publisher Rick Wolff told The Chronicle earlier this month.
Furstenberg said most of what is in the book is made public and added the College admissions office will describe the process in detail if applicants ask.
