Review by Booklist Review
Parents up to their eyeballs in college visits, financial statements, and guidance-counselor rhetoric may find Toor's insider look at "going elite" a refreshing change, but beware. This isn't golden wisdom for grown-ups looking for a way to give their beloved, brilliant offspring an edge. Having spent three years as an admissions officer at Duke, Toor tells all--and it's not necessarily a pretty picture. It's a funny, often irreverent overview of her work, interspersed with the curriculum vitae of teens she met and perspectives on the schools she visited as a recruiter. The students don't leap off the page, but Toor certainly does, as she talks about her job initiation, her pet pig, her love of running, and her disarming, eye-opening views of a process that has become so competitive in the minds of so many. Although she's often flippant about the system and her experiences, it's plain she cared about the kids who came her way. --Stephanie Zvirin
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A former admissions officer at Duke, Toor calls this a "Dear John" letter to her old job, but it's really a description of the relatively honest and complicated process by which thousands of eager, qualified applicants are evaluated every year by a typical "elite"university. While title and jacket scream "expos?," anyone looking for tales of under-the-table bribes or unopened applications in the shredder will be sadly disappointed. Human error sometimes creeps in tired readers can make cranky decisions but according to Toor, the system basically does what it's supposed to do: admit students who fit Duke's profile based on grades and the difficulty of curriculum, extracurricular activities, teacher recommendations and SAT scores. Like many universities, Duke supports affirmative action in addition to preferences for jocks and offspring of major alum donors, but such deviations from pure meritocracy should surprise no one. The only "shocker" here concerns the "BWRK" the "bright well-rounded kids" who're just too common in the applicant pool. The "angular" student, mediocre in some areas but outstanding in others, often has a more memorable application and is frequently preferred to the better-prepared BWRK. Structured to reflect the seasons of an admissions officer's life, the book reads easily, even if the personal reflections that preface each chapter (the ex-lovers, the pet pig, playing basketball, etc.) can be annoyingly irrelevant. Too benign to generate gossip in the guidance counseling/college admissions world and too superficial for social scientists' attention, the book's real audience is parents who will read anything that might give their kid an edge. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-A look into the admissions process that may make high school students rethink their college choices. Toor describes her first year as an admissions officer at Duke from the summer campus tours and interviews to the final push in May to persuade the students who were accepted to commit to her university. Each section is prefaced with Toor's personal statements, which were columns written for the Chronicle of Higher Education or National Public Radio. Although they provide insight into the author herself, the real meat of the book is professional expertise. Readers learn that schools are so inundated with applications from BWRK (Bright Well Rounded Kids) that they just seem "boring." Now colleges are looking for students who are "angular-kids who have done all the typical stuff and then have pursued an interest or passion to an nth degree." Published median SAT scores are not in line with most of a school's admissions. Publishing a wide range works to the university's advantage, because the more individuals who are encouraged to apply, the more students it can reject, and the more selective it can appear. Although Toor talks about admissions at the most elite universities, these principles still apply to schools that are not as selective. Recommend this book to your BWRKs, but make sure it is read by the guidance counselors and the teachers who write recommendations as well.-Jane S. Drabkin, Chinn Park Regional Library, Prince William, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A boorish, cynical look at the college-admissions process, from a former admissions officer (with only three years' experience). Toor, a columnist for The Chronicle of Higher Education, is not a fan of the way candidates are screened by colleges-in her case, Duke University. She's disturbed by the inequities, the class bias, and the ability of some students to buy their way in, not to mention the questionable qualifications of the judges. Here, she details the procedures by which Duke and, by extension, other colleges and universities, make their decisions about who gets the thin envelope and who gets the fat one. What strikes the reader, though, and surprisingly, is the amount of personal attention each application receives, from an evaluation of the quality of their high-school record to the attentive reading of their essays. This admissions department humanizes what might have been an enormously impersonal process. But Toor focuses on the less attractive elements of the process-"The reason we do recruiting is to get the BWRKs [bright, well-rounded kids] to apply so that we can deny them and bolster our selectivity rating"-and insinuates her own little mean-spirited commentary: of the pool of Asian students, "they were much of a muchness." Some of her advice is sensible: be yourself, write your essay about what comes from the heart. Other comments feel insincere: She goes on about how elite schools are not the last thing in education, but mentions her Yale pedigree no fewer than a dozen times. Cruelest of all is having a kid's entire life summed up in a telegraphed half page, with a jaundiced sensibility casting an aspersion here and poking fun there, then deeming the application wanting and tossing it on the reject pile. When Toor bemoaned the qualifications of those who sit in judgment, she could have been looking in the mirror.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
