Who Gets in and Why

Higher education journalist Jeffrey Selingo embedded himself at three institutions during the 2018–19 admissions cycle: Emory University in Atlanta, Davidson College in North Carolina, and the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle. Over seven months, he observed application readings, committee deliberations, and staff training while following approximately three dozen high school seniors. Three students, Grace, Nicole, and Chris, serve as recurring figures whose experiences illustrate the book's central argument: College admissions is not about the applicant. It is about the college.

Selingo opens inside Emory's admissions office, where three officers must remove 80 applicants from the tentative admit pile in a process called "shaping down" to meet enrollment targets. One applicant tagged as both a legacy and the child of an Emory employee is debated for 12 minutes and shifted to deny, only to be restored the following week during a review of specially tagged files. The senior never learns how close he came to rejection.

The first section examines how colleges recruit students. Selingo profiles Bill Royall, a direct mail consultant who in 1988 revolutionized college marketing by applying political campaign tactics: personalized letters, reply cards, and A/B testing. The College Board's Student Search Service, launched in 1971, sells test takers' names to colleges at 45 cents per name, with each name sold an average of 18 times. Selingo argues that this system drives up application volume: In 1975, 60 percent of students applied to one or two colleges, whereas about one in three now apply to seven or more.

Selingo divides colleges into "buyers" and "sellers." Sellers, roughly 10 percent of four-year institutions, have prestigious brand names and a surplus of applicants willing to pay full price. Buyers, the vast majority, must offer tuition discounts to fill seats. He also categorizes students as "drivers," who begin searching early with ample resources, and "passengers," who start late or lack access to advice.

Grace, a Chinese American senior from San Francisco, is a driver fixated on East Coast schools like Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth, ignoring cost despite her family's limited savings. Nicole, a senior at a competitive public high school near North Carolina's Research Triangle (the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area), is a driver consumed by prestige who scores a 31 on the ACT but considers it insufficient. Chris, a first-generation student from rural Pennsylvania, is a passenger with minimal college counseling who takes the SAT once, scoring 1310. An impromptu visit to Gettysburg College sparks his interest, but his search is constrained by geography and finances.

Selingo traces the U.S. News & World Report college rankings from a 1983 reputational survey to a quantitative formula that shapes how families evaluate colleges. He profiles Richard Freeland, who became president of Northeastern University in 1996 and reverse-engineered the formula, using merit aid, the Common Application (a shared platform allowing students to apply to multiple schools with one form), and peer lobbying to vault Northeastern from No. 162 to No. 44 by 2019.

The second section takes the reader inside the reading process. At Emory, paired readers rate applicants on a 1-to-5 scale in curriculum rigor, extracurricular activities, recommendations, and intellectual curiosity. A West Coast applicant with a 34 ACT and interests in painting and ceramics alongside strong AP science courses is denied, while an athletic recruit with similar ratings but a coach's endorsement is accepted. Selingo notes that holistic admissions originated at Ivy League schools in the early 1900s as a way to limit Jewish enrollment through subjective criteria; the civil rights era repurposed it to expand access to women and Black students. He also examines the Harvard admissions lawsuit alleging that Asian American applicants received systematically lower personal ratings.

Selingo explains that early decision (ED), the binding admissions option with a November deadline, primarily benefits colleges by locking in committed students and boosting yield (the share of accepted students who actually enroll). Many early slots go to recruited athletes, legacies, and scholars from QuestBridge, which matches high-achieving low-income students with selective colleges, and the Posse Foundation, which places student cohorts at partner schools on scholarships. These reserved spots leave fewer open seats than headline acceptance rates suggest. Nicole applies ED to the University of Pennsylvania and is denied, forcing her to scramble on regular applications.

The March 2019 Operation Varsity Blues scandal, in which wealthy parents were indicted for bribing coaches to secure admissions, provides a lens for examining athletics and legacy preferences. Amherst College, with 1,900 undergraduates, dedicates roughly 157 of about 490 incoming spots to athletes each year. Data from the Harvard admissions trial showed that legacy applicants were accepted at 34 percent versus six percent for others; applicants tagged as athletes, legacies, or on the Dean's Interest List (a roster flagged for special institutional consideration) were accepted at 41 percent versus 4.2 percent.

A student's high school often matters more than the individual applicant. Chris's school offers only four AP courses, while Grace's offers 27 and Nicole's 29. During Emory's regular decision reading, an African American female applicant with a 3.95 GPA who avoided rigorous math is denied, while an African American male from the same school with lower grades is accepted because Black male applicants are rare in Emory's pool. A girl ranked third in her class of 1,000 with a 1570 SAT is denied because her application lacks depth.

The spring shaping process reveals how institutional priorities override individual merit. At Emory, admissions dean John Latting instructs staff to cut 1,000 students from the admit pile while protecting diversity. At Lafayette College, a need-aware institution (one that considers applicants' ability to pay), roughly 200 students are rejected because the college cannot afford them. Financial aid is opaque: consultants use econometric models to maximize institutional revenue, and one analysis found 136 unique terms for a single federal loan type in award letters.

As May 1 approaches, the three students make their decisions. Grace finds Wellesley College matches her vision but receives no aid and deposits at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for roughly half the cost. Nicole, rejected by Dartmouth, deposits at Northeastern University, unwilling to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with 40 classmates despite its higher ranking and lower cost. Chris receives a $47,000 aid package from Gettysburg; after an appeal adds $2,000, his mother takes a second job. Selingo cites economists Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger, whose research showed that students of comparable ability who attended colleges of differing selectivity earned essentially the same incomes decades later, suggesting that individual ambition matters more than institutional prestige.

In their first semesters, Grace finds UCLA surprisingly intimate, with small discussion sections and environmental research clubs. Nicole appreciates Northeastern's co-op program, which alternates coursework with paid professional work placements, and professors with real-world experience. Chris struggles with the liberal arts curriculum's requirement to delay declaring a major, having expected immediate vocational preparation.

In the conclusion, Selingo identifies forces reshaping admissions: a projected decline in high school graduates between 2026 and 2031, the diminishing role of standardized tests after more than 1,500 campuses dropped the requirement, and growing polarization between wealthy sellers and struggling buyers facing possible closure. He proposes eliminating binding early decision, redesigning applications, expanding class sizes at elite institutions with federal incentives for low- and middle-income enrollment, and creating price-transparency databases. He closes with Georgetown admissions dean Charles Deacon's observation that few would notice if a top college accidentally swapped a thousand admits with a thousand denials, and a quotation from former MIT admissions dean B. Alden Thresher: "One cannot tell by looking at a toad how far he will jump" (267).