Rumsfeld would put the White House back in order. "Meanwhile, we're trying to pick off Brown's kids and Yale's kids. One boy with a high SAT score at Dwight-Englewood School, a respected prep school, said he was seeking early admission to Connecticut College because he "had a feeling" about the place. He had allotted just six hours for the day's work, so he would have to speak quickly. Privacy Policy I would highly recommend this book to any parent or student if they want to have an insider's view of the college applications process. However, they couldn’t stop Ford from making public gaffes.

"Ice cream, too," Ralph added, sounding like Willie Wonka beckoning kids to the chocolate factory. One of the most valuable books that any parent of a perspective college student will read. Nearly two-thirds of Wesleyan undergraduates played an intramural or team sport. Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2016. Jacques Steinberg’s The Gatekeepers, an account of the admissions system at Wesleyan University, is enormously readable.It is also revelatory, if not always in ways the author intends. It takes the reader insight the thinking of the admission people as they build the college's freshman class - what they look for and what they think is important. The median SAT score of those admitted-a combined 1370 on a scale of 1600-was not only the highest in Wesleyan's history, but also higher than that of all but a handful of other colleges. You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.

Getting into a given school is not life and death.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. There he had laid out travel directions printed from the Internet, along with a well-worn road atlas pocked with green asterisks spread across a half dozen states. More important, since Harvard and Yale and Brown were rejecting more applicants than ever, Wesleyan had a real shot at getting some students whom it might have lost to the Ivies a decade ago-if only enough of them knew Wesleyan's name and philosophy, and could be persuaded to choose Wesleyan over its more immediate competitors, including Williams and Amherst. It was either that or impeachment. History This website uses cookies to improve your experience. But to the handful of seniors and juniors who sat around a conference table that autumn morning listening to this smiling emissary on leave from his ivory tower, the message was unmistakable: Wesleyan Wants You! Blockchain is dead – long live blockchain! Bookstore The lion's share of the nation's two thousand four-year colleges take almost anyone who applies. One of the high school seniors, who had already visited a friend on the Wesleyan campus, answered before Ralph could. Yet each year, an increasing number of American teenagers flood those brand-name institutions with a disproportionate number of applications. He urged them to call him Ralph, not Rafael, his given name, and certainly not Mr. Figueroa. "Do the races mix?" The book is also a vivid reminder that admissions officers are people, too -- people of infinite variety. On that bracing morning in early November of 1999, Ralph Figueroa was beginning his fifth year as an admissions officer at Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut, one of the nation's premier liberal arts colleges. One explanation for this, apart from the larger student population, surely lies with their parents, who were impressing ever more strongly on their offspring that a blue-chip education is the key to a successful life. And then, nearly an hour after his sales call had begun, it was over. Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Cold War Canada, a 2006 historical study by […] A must read for anyone getting ready for college! With his thick, blown-back black hair, which he had neatly arranged at a Courtyard by Marriott just after daybreak, Ralph looked like someone on his way to sell a $350 vacuum cleaner, rather than the product of a $35,000-a-year education that came with the unwritten guarantee of a happy and meaningful life. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. But like a politician wading into a room full of strangers, Ralph and his colleagues were not going to rest until they had given every last college applicant a reason to cast a vote for Wesleyan.

Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. He was hoping to seize the imagination of that elusive senior who hadn't given Wesleyan much thought, if he or she had given it any thought at all, but who appeared to have credentials so impeccable as to fairly sail through the admissions process. Almost immediately, the students' hands shot up. The release of the incriminating White House tapes resulted in Nixon resigning on 9 August 1974. His career in Congress demonstrated that he knew how to run a ruthlessly organized machine.

A university is only as good as its students, so why shouldn't Ralph seek to lure the best that were out there?

And as Ralph spoke, two months before all applications were due, there were already indications that this year would be even more competitive, with thousands more students projected to graduate from American high schools than in the previous school year.

He had a sealed envelope in … These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. It was eye-opening to read about how intense some of these teenagers are. While the poster made a good first impression, some applicants would be disappointed when they saw the real thing. Bad Blood book summary | John Carreyrou | 6-Minute Summary, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century Summary | Yuval Noah Harari, Cosmos Carl Sagan Summary | 6-Minute Summary.

Bush, and many others, this is a treasure trove of ­experiences. The Dark Side Of The Recovery Revealed In Big Data, Reasons why Web Design plays a vital role in SEO, New Tech Helps Transform ERP Software for IIoT Era. And just to make sure that the students kept a vivid snapshot of the Connecticut campus projected on the screens in their minds, the university had sent along piles of posters of a Wesleyan landmark, Foss Hill, photographed on a fall day as beautiful as this one. Other than those fortunate enough to be accepted, the most immediate beneficiaries of all this wooing would be Wesleyan's professors. "We want students to be scholar-athletes," Ralph said.

Almost all of the students, though, promised Ralph that they would apply to Wesleyan, and experience had taught him that such students usually did. $28.00 "No one is staying static," said Barbara-Jan Wilson, who had left the deanship of the Wesleyan admissions office over the previous summer to become the university's vice president for university relations, which meant she had gone from sweet-talking applicants to sweet-talking donors.

You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. The university's gates, it seemed, had been flung wide open. "I am an agent of the institution," Ralph said in an interview that fall. 292 pp. Gives a good insight into the admission thinking of the schools, Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2019. This stage is about figuring out which students should be considering Wesleyan, which students really need to have us on their radar screens. He was the man for the job. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 2, 2016. When a presidential campaign is over and the winning candidate is in the White House, he (and in the future, she) must face the difficult task of turning political rhetoric into concrete legislation or executive action. At first, it was a relatively informal position, but now it is seen as one of the most important posts in the White House. But in building its arsenal of top students-with "top" variously defined as those who checked "valedictorian" on their applications; those with decent test scores who identified themselves as black or Hispanic; or those who played the bassoon-Wesleyan was also seeking to impress demanding audiences far from its Connecticut campus. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and Amazon Prime. In truth, Wesleyan was part of a distinct minority within the academy that fall: one of only about fifty American colleges that reject more students than they accept. For many years that person has been the White House chief of staff. It is, first, a series of excellent suspense stories, with vivid characterizations of the students seeking admission to Wesleyan.

"But you can't really think about that at this stage. Theme: Newsup by Themeansar. Yet I like to focus on the more human perspective: there are going to be students who discover Wesleyan who wouldn't have otherwise.". His downfall soon followed. This one-page guide includes a plot summary and brief analysis of Gatekeepers by Franca Iacovetta. Nixon, therefore, turned to H. R. Haldeman to act as chief of staff. Please try again. We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Another girl said she'd consider Wesleyan "if I don't get into Hopkins." "But don't tell anyone.". Asked later by another visitor if Ralph's talk had swayed them in any way, most of those he met that day listed first choices that were not Wesleyan. one girl asked. First- and second-generation Americans, whose own parents had been content to see them graduate from any college, were now advising their own children and grandchildren that only a marquee name would be acceptable. The first book to reveal the college admission process in such behind-the-scenes detail, The Gatekeepers will be required reading for every parent of a high school-age child and for every student facing the arduous and anxious task of applying to college. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Ralph knew, though, that in his quest to find such a prize he was inviting most of his listeners to submit a fifty-five-dollar application fee sheerly for the privilege of being rejected. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free. They included the writer of Batman Forever, the director of American Pie and the actor William Christopher, who, Ralph assured his listeners, would be well known to their parents as Father Mulcahy on M*A*S*H. Just then a girl interrupted: Was the biology department any good? Both are assumed to spend most days sitting imperiously behind desks well out of reach of the general public, from which they deign to approve only a fraction of the endless series of pitches that are presented to them in rapid-fire succession.