'Valedictorians at the Gate'

Valedictorians at the Gate: Standing Out, Getting In, and Staying Sane While Applying to College (Henry Holt and Co.) is among this year's new books on admissions. In the book, Becky Munsterer Sabky walks students and parents through the entire process, from campus visits to the selection of a college, from essays to standardized tests. With a conversational tone that will appeal to students, Sabky answers their questions and encourages them to be themselves.

Sabky answered question about the book via email:

Q: In your introduction, you write that "We need to help our students apply to college, rather than compete for college." Would you explain how one does that?

A: I think it's important to remind our young people that college admissions is a business, not a sport. There are plenty of colleges with plenty of seats in the United States. If a student approaches the application as a competition (particularly at selective institutions), he's assuming there can be a strategy to "win." But a student will never know the strength of other applicants in the pool, and admissions is a complicated business based on the whole strength of an applicant pool and not any one applicant.

Checking boxes, inauthentically building resumes, and obsessing over achievements puts tremendous pressure on our young people and still doesn't guarantee admission (especially at highly selective universities). The best our college hopefuls can do is to prepare for the rigors of college (and life beyond university) for their own sake. They need to stop strategizing how to gain admission, but instead focus on presenting their most thorough and thoughtful applications. By shifting this mindset, our young people can stop chasing an imaginary admissions-guaranteed algorithm, and instead focus on best communicating their strengths and authentic interests in an application. This way, college admission is not a prize or a finish line, it's one step on a learning journey.

Q: In the first chapter, you discuss a Dartmouth admission meeting at which you were on the losing side of several votes. Doesn't your experience suggest that students really are competing to get in?

A: My experience in making admissions decisions proved that there was no such thing as a "right" or "wrong" singular admissions decision. Since many colleges already have a self-selecting admissions pool, it's often the case that denied students could have been as engaged academically and personally in the college as the admitted (and vice versa). As I learned, the job of an admissions committee is to strengthen the academic and personal profile of the already existing campus community. We needed to build a diversely talented class who would contribute in various ways. Once I read a larger cross-section of the pool, it was easier to make "stronger" decisions based on the specific college's immediate needs and interests. My biggest takeaway was that admissions is a complicated business based on various (and sometimes changing) institutional priorities.

Q: You talk about how colleges look similar. How does an applicant get around that and discover a college's true nature?

A: Some colleges do look similar. I think this can be a great thing because it's a reminder to students that they can be happy and productive at multiple places. But it can be helpful to do a deep-dive in research on institutions of interest. After exploring the admissions website, taking campus tours (online or in person), and speaking with as many students/alumni as available, I encourage students to take further steps. I suggest reading online campus newspapers (especially the op-eds) to have a sense of current events and hot topics. I also recommend that a student pay attention to trends in where the college is spending its money. (If there's a new arts building, chances are a college will be spending money to recruit strong professors for the program.) Lastly, it can be helpful to scroll through a specific course catalog to ensure that a curriculum matches one's academic interests.

Q: You take letters of recommendation quite seriously. Why?

A: Letters of recommendation share contextual evidence of one's academic and intellectual journey. Since so many students had similar grades and test results, recommendations helped present a much-welcomed new perspective on students' candidacies. We'd learn about students' curiosity in and out of the classroom, their intangible qualities, and their character. We recognized that not every recommender had the time/training to write an insightful recommendation, so we'd take a student's high school context into consideration when reviewing these letters. Still, even a short and simple rec could provide confirmation on one's candidacy.

Q: What is the key to application essays?

A: The key to application essays is to remember there is no such thing as the Great College Essay. Instead, there are many great college essays. The difference between a good essay and a great essay is in the details. A good essay is well written, but a great essay adds a specific insight about a person. (For example, hundreds of students write essays about their love of playing soccer. But a great soccer essay might speak to a student's interest in his performance as it relates to his pre-game meal ritual.)

I encourage students to ask themselves if their best friend could find their anonymous essay if pinned on a wall of a thousand other anonymous essays. (If their essay could have been written by multiple people, it's too generic.) I also remind students that no student is ever admitted solely because of an essay, but rather that an essay is one piece of a holistic application. It's important to be as thoughtful about all pieces of an application (including short answers and supplemental essays) as they all contribute to the whole.