By Daniel Golden
Each spring hundreds of thousands of middle-class and lower-income high-school seniors study that they have got been rejected by way of America’s so much particular faculties. What they could by no means study is what percentage applicants like themselves were omitted in prefer of rich white scholars with lesser credentials—children of alumni, huge donors, or celebrities.
In this explosive publication, the Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Daniel Golden argues that the USA, the so-called land of chance, is speedily turning into an aristocracy during which America’s richest households obtain precise entry to elite larger education—enabling them to offer their young ones much more of a head begin. in accordance with years of investigative reporting and countless numbers of interviews with scholars, mom and dad, college directors, and admissions personnel—some of whom risked their jobs to talk to the author—The rate of Admission exposes the corrupt admissions practices that want the rich, the robust, and the famous.
In The cost of Admission, Golden names names, in addition to grades and try rankings. He unearths how the sons of former vp Al Gore, one-time Hollywood strength dealer Michael Ovitz, and Senate Majority chief invoice Frist leapt prior to extra deserving candidates at Harvard, Brown, and Princeton. He explores favoritism on the Ivy Leagues, Duke, the college of Virginia, and Notre Dame, between different associations. He finds that schools carry Asian American scholars to the next typical than whites; agree to identify IX through giving scholarships to wealthy ladies in “patrician activities” like horseback using, squash, and staff; and pay off congressmen for favors through admitting their childrens. He additionally finds that Harvard continues a “Z-list” for well-connected yet underqualified scholars, who're quietly admitted at the situation that they wait a yr to enroll.
The rate of Admission explodes the parable of an American meritocracy—the trust that it doesn't matter what your heritage, while you're clever and diligent adequate, you might have entry to the nation’s so much elite universities. it's needs to examining not just for folks and scholars with a private stake in collage admissions, but in addition for these disturbed by means of the becoming divide among traditional and privileged Americans.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Extra info for The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges--and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates
Example text
Harvard officials may have sought assurances that he had outgrown his rule breaking. If so, that hope was misplaced. After enrolling at Harvard in 2001, he was ticketed in September 2002 near a military base for driving under the influence. Charged with marijuana possession in 2003, he settled that case by agreeing to substance abuse counseling. Aside from playing junior varsity football as a freshman, he kept a low profile on campus; when he graduated from Harvard in 2005, his name wasn't even listed in the commencement program.
They're forgiven transgressions that would doom other candidates, from missed application deadlines to drunken driving. Top colleges and universities like to boast that they are “need-blind”— that is, they offer enough financial aid so that the students they admit can afford to attend. But they are not wealth-blind. They take a disproportionate number of students from prep schools, and have been known—as Duke University did under its late president Terry Sanford—to instruct recruiters specifically to pursue rich students.
Any of the five invitation-only eating clubs along Prospect Avenue in Princeton would have beckoned to him, eager for the Frist cachet. He could have chosen his father's southern-genteel Cottage Club, or aristocratic Ivy, which welcomed three of his St. Albans classmates, including Brandon Parry. Brandon told me that Ivy members have a direct pipeline to high-paying jobs at financial giants such as investment banking firm Goldman Sachs and management consultant McKinsey&Company. In February 2005, Brandon attended a Goldman Sachs recruiting event for internship applicants, which featured eight Princeton alumni working as Goldman analysts.
