The travails of the wealthy college applicant

Hardships, poverty and adversity trump a life of privilege when it comes to getting into colleges — or at least that's the facetious point of this Wall Street Journal commentary, which takes a mocking tone about the whole notion and about the packaging that some college advisors urge.

The thoroughly researched book "The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges -- and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates," by Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden, tells the opposite story. (The book is based on Golden's Pulitzer prizewinning reporting on the topic for the WSJ.)

A Desperate Need for Acceptance
How to get into college despite the disadvantage of privilege.
BY NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Given that, with the arrival of the new year, college applications are now flooding into admissions offices all over the country, it might be a good time to reflect on the absurdity of the whole college-admissions process.

Take this passage from Michele Hernández's "Acing the College Application," where she assesses the chances of a high-school student getting into a college of his choice. "Best case: Neither of your parents attended college at all, your father is a factory worker, and your mom is on disability. . . . Worst case: Your father went to Yale as an undergraduate and then Harvard Business School and is now an investment banker and your mom went to Brown, holds a Ph.D. in chemistry and works as a research chemist."

We all understand that being a rich white kid puts one at a disadvantage in the college-admissions process. But it is worth pausing to savor the irony of an institution that charges as much as $45,000 a year asking its applicants to demonstrate their proletarian credentials.
What's a privileged kid to do?

Ms. Hernández, a former admissions officer at Dartmouth, offers a couple of options. "Be vague" about your parents' occupations: "If your mom is the chief neurosurgeon for a New York hospital, try 'medical.' " Or you could get yourself a job, "the less exalted the better," Ms. Hernández advises, citing one boarding-school student who improved his admissions chances by baling hay every summer (on his family's farm).

Click to read the rest of the article.

Michele Hernández, by the way, is extremely controversial among reputable college advisors. (And in keeping with the tone of her own advice, she's a Caucasian who acquired her pleasingly ethnic surname by marriage.)