Getting In: Inside The College Admissions Process

With the crisp pacing of a suspense novelist, veteran reporter Bill Paul follows five high-school honor students and the dean of admission at Princeton through each step of the college admissions process. As the narrative unfolds, we watch the students' successes and blunders as they ponder where to apply, write and rewrite their essays, endure alumni interviews, agonize over early decision, and anxiously await the April delivery of the hoped-for thick envelope that means acceptance, or the dreaded thin envelope that contains a curt rejection. What emerges is the clearest picture ever of this complex, frustrating, and highly imperfect process, and how it truly works.

Bill Paul was for many years a reporter with The Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Princeton, he is a member of the Alumni Schools Committee there that interviews prospective students.