Tina Jordan and Gal Beckerman

<h1>The college admissions scandal that erupted Tuesday in which federal prosecutors charged 50 people in a scheme to buy spots in the freshman classes at Yale, Stanford and other big-name schools has exposed the lengths to which rich, entitled parents — including Hollywood celebrities and prominent business leaders — are willing to go to get their progeny into the “right” university.</h1>

But it was also a reminder of just how filled with mystery and anxiety that process is — so much so that unlocking it was worth millions to those who could afford it. For a more affordable price — or for free at your public library — check out these books that provide a glimpse into to those backrooms where college admissions take place in America today.

— ‘Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life,’ by William Deresiewicz

In this scathing takedown of higher education, Deresiewicz, a former professor at Yale, accuses our country’s most elite schools of fostering a learning environment devoid of creativity and critical thinking. In his review, Dwight Garner noted that Deresiewicz “spends a long time considering college admissions because a vast number of crimes, he suggests, are committed in its name.”

— ‘Admission: A Novel,’ by Jean Hanff Korelitz​

Korelitz’s delicious, page-turning novel about buried secrets is also an unabashed peek into the cutthroat world of Ivy League admissions. Its main character is a Princeton admissions officer, Portia Nathan, who has the responsibility of “winnowing the stupendously remarkable from a vast field of the only normally remarkable.”

— ‘Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College,’ by Andrew Ferguson

Ferguson captures the world of higher education for what it truly is: an industry, one replete with consultants, high-priced tutors, coaches and strategists. The pursuit of getting into the best schools has long ceased being a question merely of merit. But Ferguson approaches this panicked subject in a style that makes it a “calm, amusing, low-key meditation,” Dwight Garner wrote in his review. It’s a book many parents are sure to grip “as if it were a cold compress they might apply to their fevered foreheads.”

— ‘The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates,’ by Daniel Golden

Golden, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, applied his investigative skills to try and understand the admission process. After two years and hundreds of interviews, he revealed just how often qualified applicants get passed over in favor of wealthy students with lesser credentials. Writing in the Book Review, our reviewer called the book “a delicious account of gross inequities in high places.”

— ‘The Admissions: A Novel,’ by Meg Mitchell Moore

A burning desire to get accepted to Harvard sits at the center of Moore’s novel, which explores how the admissions process ripples through a high-achieving Bay Area family. For Angela Hawthorne, the eldest daughter, there was “no stopping, no sleeping, until Cambridge. You get there, and then you can rest.”

— ‘Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania,’ by Frank Bruni

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni tries to understand the thick coat of anxiety that covers everything related to college admission, the sense that this one decision could make or break a whole life. “There’s no single juncture, no one crossroads, on which everything hinges,” Bruni writes. “So why do so many Americans — anxious parents, addled children — treat the college admissions process as if it were precisely that?” His aim is to get parents and students to relax and put higher education and what it represents into proper perspective.

— ‘The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy,’ by Nicholas Lemann

No conversation about college admission can avoid the outsize role played by the SAT, the exam created to provide an allegedly level playing field and ensure a meritocratic system. Lemann’s book puts the lie to that notion by offering a historical look at the test’s origins and the ways it has been used over the decades to cement class and racial divides. One of Lemann’s prescriptions still seems resonant: “Test-prep should consist of mastering the high-school curriculum, not learning tricks to outwit multiple-choice aptitude exams.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="2e47e393-5ac2-43b3-933a-1dfcedb9c391" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/books/college-admissions-scandal-books.html">The New York Times</a>.

Getting in: Books that expose college admissions mania

In this scathing takedown of higher education, Deresiewicz, a former professor at Yale, accuses our country’s most elite schools of fostering a learning environment devoid of creativity and critical thinking.

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Tina Jordan and Gal Beckerman

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Getting in: Books that expose college admissions mania