LET'S BLOW UP THE ELITE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS BLACK BOX

A blistering takedown of the admissions process at elite academic institutions.

Connelly, the dean emeritus of Golden Gate University’s business school and a father of five, examines what he calls “the black box” of elite college admissions in order to reveal how it perpetuates socio-economic inequality and has even driven some teens to suicide. The book is split into three sections: “The State of Play in the Admissions Game,” “The Dark Side of Admissions,” and “How To Blow Up the Elite College Admissions Black Box and Reopen the Front Door to Social and Economic Mobility.” Each repeats the same arguments, noting how the admissions process works and asserting that it has a negative impact not only on students, but also on the country as a whole. Many of Connelly’s points are well taken, such as that students from lower incomes are at a disadvantage, in part, because they must take out loans that saddle them with crushing debt and that students from wealthier families have such advantages as the ability to send kids to “feeder schools,” which act as direct gateways into elite colleges. These notions will come as little surprise to many readers; however, the author also provides research and his own firsthand experience as a father to support his claims. He also examines the problem of admissions from several angles, showing how the system is economically, socially, and personally problematic; at one point, for instance, he sharply notes how colleges employ “sophisticated marketing techniques that exploit the anxieties of children and their parents in order to achieve a self-inflating and essentially meaningless aura of ranked selectivity.” The book ends with practical, actionable steps on how to create a fairer and more balanced college admissions process.

A rancorous but focused treatise on college admissions process reform.