Although the college admissions process has frequently been criticized as being unfair or overly subjective, Jacques Steinberg '88 takes a sympathetic view of this difficult rite of passage in his new book, "The Gatekeepers."
Steinberg, who is also a member of The Dartmouth's Board of Proprietors, spent the 1999-2000 school year shadowing the work of Ralph Figueroa, an admissions officer at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.
He drew on his observations to produce a series of articles for the New York Times, where he is currently an education correspondent.
Steinberg said he was surprised by "how human the college admissions process is" and by the extent of the efforts admissions officers made to get to know each applicant.
Every application submitted to Wesleyan is read by two different people, and if there is any uncertainty about whether or not to admit someone, the entire admissions committee convenes to discuss the case, he said.
Still, Steinberg acknowledged that the admissions process can often be "personal" and "idiosyncratic," even "arbitrary."
Steinberg's account of Figueroa's reactions to the applications of Tiffany Wang and Aggie Ramirez nicely demonstrates this idiosyncratic aspect of admissions.
Wang scored a 1470 on the SAT I, well above Wesleyan's average, and has taken six Advanced Placement courses to date. Ramirez scored 1090 and received a smattering of C's and D's in her senior year.
Nonetheless, Figueroa, after much deliberation, assigned Wang a "deny plus" and Ramirez an "admit minus."
He sensed -- from Tiffany's relatively low class ranking and a teacher's recommendation saying she was surprised that Tiffany made National Merit Semifinalist -- that Tiffany had not challenged herself as she should have in high school.
By contrast, Ramirez had already won a scholarship to a private boarding school in Maryland, been elected president of her class and thrown herself into extracurricular activities.
Ultimately, both Wang and Ramriez made Wesleyan's wait list.
Steinberg said that such practices did not upset him. He quoted Wesleyan's president, Douglas Bennet, remarking that fairness is not the first objective of Wesleyan admissions.
Steinberg also said that "the way to define fairness is not the SAT I in and of itself," when ample research has documented that students' upbringing strongly influences their scores.
If people are willing to accept that admissions decisions should be made by human beings -- not by computers that could formulaically add up students' SAT scores, weigh grade-point averages and assign points for various extracurricular accomplishments -- they should be willing to accept that the process will be "subjective and messy," Furstenberg said.
Justin Harmon, director of communications at Wesleyan, said that Wesleyan's admissions office has generally been pleased with the book.
A link from Wesleyan's home page leads visitors directly to the book's website, and another directs them to a video of "Today Show" host Katie Couric interviewing Steinberg and Figueroa about the book.
Harmon said, however, that Wesleyan is concerned that Steinberg's choice to focus on the stories of certain applicants may distort the admissions process.
Steinberg describes in particular detail the experiences of Julianna Bentes and Becca Jannol, seniors at the Harvard-Westlake School, an exclusive private school in Los Angeles.
Sharon Merrow, Harvard-Westlake's guidance counselor, was a close friend of Figueroa's when they were both undergraduates at Stanford in the early 1980s.
Their continuing friendship allowed Figueroa an unusual degree of insight into Harvard-Westlake's senior classes, and Figueroa's colleagues are seen ribbing him about the relationship in the book. One asks him jokingly, "How much are they paying you?"
Figueroa's advocacy for Jannol became particularly contentious.
Jannol was suspended briefly from Harvard-Westlake after she confessed to eating part of a "pot brownie" that one of her classmates baked.
She was the only student to come forward about the incident at the time, and, according to Steinberg, her peers and teachers only respected her for her honesty. Jannol was elected president of her class and named chair of the school's honor board.
Nonetheless, her decision to write about the incident concerned some admissions committee members, and she was wait listed at Wesleyan. Later, largely because of Merrow and Figueroa's efforts on her behalf, she was removed from the wait list at both Wesleyan and Cornell.
Harmon said that it concerned some admissions officers that potential Wesleyan applicants might interpret Jannol's tale to mean that applicants who attend high schools with particularly aggressive counselors are at an advantage, when this simply isn't the case.
"These kinds of exchanges do happen, and we do rely on such stuff, but it doesn't influence decisions so strongly," she said.
Steinberg said that he used two main criteria when selecting students to focus on.
First, he wanted to pick students whose files Figueroa read. Secondly, he wanted each student he picked to help him make a broader point about the nature of college admissions and also to pick stories that simply make "good yarns."
In Jannol's case, he thought that telling the story of an applicant "with a skeleton in her closet" would be interesting and relevant to students in a similar situation.
Book provided for review by The Dartmouth Bookstore.
