Jacques Steinberg's _The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College_

My friend, Dennis, a Wesleyan graduate, recommended this non-fiction book, published in 2002, to me. Steinberg, an education writer for The New York Times, tracks Ralph Figueroa, a Wesleyan University admissions officer, as he recruits college hopefuls. As a teacher who pens several college recommendations a year, many of which are addressed to the prestigious liberal-arts college under scrutiny in this book, I found this an absorbing and interesting read. While Steinberg doesn't offer any earth-shaking, surprising insights--suspect that college preparatory teachers are all too aware of the vagaries and quirky variables inherent in college admissions--I enjoyed the compelling case-study profiles of the applicants, representing diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicities and think the book might provide instructive perspective for students and their parents as they go through the admissions process. Steinberg also does an excellent job in documenting the mullings and occasionally agonizing decisions made by Wesleyan's selection committee as they weigh the relative merits of test scores, recommendations, GPAs, and
co-curricular/extracurricular activities and construct the incoming freshman class of 2004. The bottom line? Admissions, though we'd desire to view it as logical and just, is a very human process.