re: You be the admissions director

Well, NYT articles aside, if anyone is interested in how things really roll, head over to Amazon.com or your nearest Kindle and hit up "The Price of Admission" by Daniel Golden, from the Wall Street Journal and you will see that favorable admissions policies swing both ways.

A much tougher to find work, and one that gives a broader picture into the process than POA, which centers on how the rich and legacies can really work the system in their favor, is Questions and Admissions: Reflections on 100,000 Admissions Decisions at Stanford, by former admissions dean Jean Fetter.

That book is pretty dated since at the time of writing, Stanford worked strictly within the regular admissions cycle while they now have Early Action but it does give a holistic view of how a class gets created at an elite university, with a diverse class of intellectuals, jocks, rich kids, poor kids, legacies, AA admits and what have you. A little "holier than thou" in some cases (Stanford never buckled to pressure on admits? Really? LOL!) but a good view from the inside.