Texas Ed Spectator

I’ve seen this book, “Acing the College Application,” around and just the little skimming I’ve done standing in the book aisle has convinced me that it’s a superficial treatment of the college application process. This review of Naomi Schaefer Riley’s seems to confirm it.

OpinionJournal – Leisure & Arts

Take this passage from Michele Hernández’s “Acing the College Application,” where she assesses the chances of a high-school student getting into a college of his choice. “Best case: Neither of your parents attended college at all, your father is a factory worker, and your mom is on disability. . . . Worst case: Your father went to Yale as an undergraduate and then Harvard Business School and is now an investment banker and your mom went to Brown, holds a Ph.D. in chemistry and works as a research chemist.”

We all understand that being a rich white kid puts one at a disadvantage in the college-admissions process.

This casually drawn conclusion on both the parts of the author, Michele Hernandez, and the reviewer rankles me. First of all, how can you have all the “passionate” enrichment activities unless your parents have money? I know some exceptional kids do but they are just that, exceptional.

Then there is the fact that while students from private schools make up only ten percent of the student population at the elementary and high school level, they seem to be disproportionately represented at the elite colleges.

Percentage of freshman from public school

Poor little, rich Johnny isn’t getting beat out by some poor Hispanic kid from the Rio Grande valley; he’s getting beat out by another poor, little rich kid.

Now at days, virtually everyone applying to selective schools has perfect or near perfect SAT scores and is in the top ten percent of their class. So which do you think is going to make more of a difference in the application process, a mother who is an alumnus or a father who is a truck driver? Which applicants are more likely to have the resources to follow their passions?

I’m sure that there are some minority students admitted that have lower scores than many of the white males who were rejected. I’m just as sure that there are athletes, artists, musicians, and students from Montana (other traits people are often born with) that have lower scores than those who were not admitted.

It sounds like these books are encouraging you to reap the benefits of your parent’s wealth without appearing as such to the admissions committees. Or maybe the authors are just trying to reap the benefit’s the parents wealth without appearing as such to the parents.

Technorati Tags: college admissions, private admission counseling, discrimination, Acing the College Application, What High Schools Don’t Tell You, Naomi Schaefer Riley