Excerpt: ‘What Colleges Don’t Tell You’

Even students who seem unlikely to get accepted to top colleges can increase their chances, if they polish their applications, work on their test scores, and round out their experiences. In her new book, “What What Colleges Don’t Tell You (And Other Parents Don't Want You to Know),” Elizabeth Wissner-Gross shares her secrets to winning in the college admission process. She also reveals what admissions officers consider the best and worst application essays. Wissner-Gross was on “Today” to disccuss material in her book. Read an excerpt.

CHAPTER ONE:
The Shoo-In Kid

The BIG QUESTION: When more than 2.94 million students graduate from more than 27,000 high schools each year in the United States — including more than 27,000 valedictorians, 27,000 salutatorians, 27,000 student government presidents, 27,000 school newspaper editors-in-chief, and about 25,000 students with verbal SAT scores that are 750 or above and 30,000 with math scores of 750 or above — totaling more than 100,000 “top kids” (assuming some kids have a combination of these credentials — otherwise more than 150,000 top kids) — why should a college that admits only 500 to 3,000 freshmen annually take your kid? That’s a sobering question that parents must know how to answer if they want to help their kids get into the most competitive colleges. Saying that your kid is  hard-working, a great kid, top in the school or believing that your kid is even gifted, well-rounded, head of every organization and club in school, deserving, or able to handle the workload, doesn’t cut it. Getting a lovely recommendation from the guidance counselor, principal or a teacher isn’t enough. To be able to state all of the above, isn’t even enough. These are all qualities that are assumed of all the applicants to the most competitive colleges.

Secret 1: In order to help your kid get into a “most-competitive” college, you must help your child craft an honest and convincing answer to the BIG QUESTION. Most people don’t understand that this is the main question that “most-competitive” colleges are asking during interviews, in the college essays, and in reading recommendations. But if you know this one secret and follow up on it, you will be far more helpful to your son or daughter in succeeding at the college admissions game.

Granted, the 107 students out of 300,000 test takers who received perfect scores of 2400 on the first round of the new SATs in 2005 might have deserved to feel a little more relaxed than other applicants. Placing among the country’s top 107 does make one stand out nationally. But receiving a perfect score is still no guarantee of admission and no cause for complacency. (Top colleges love to boast about how many students with perfect scores they’ve turned away. And they don’t like to grant admission to lax under-achievers based solely on a lottery-like one-day performance on the SATs. So extremely high SAT scores alone will not guarantee admission.)

Secret 2: Behind every successful kid, there’s a supportive network or individual. If you look at the enrollment of the most competitive colleges, you’ll find that most of the kids who attend have been assisted enormously by families, mentors, community members, teachers or all of the above. The vast majority of parents of successful students can take credit for helping their kids get into the school of their choice, often investing hours to do so.

Granted, not all parents are equally capable of helping. And some parents may be too busy. Others claim to want to encourage independence (which is not achieved, I should emphasize, by ignoring a child’s needs). And many, many parents claim that they would love to help their kids, but that their kids reject any offers of assistance. That may be, but don’t be fooled into thinking that some of the most successful kids just make it on their own. Very, very few do nowadays — no matter how independent their parents claim they are. Your extremely competent, deserving high school student needs your help.

Who says a parent need get involved? Why not just have the child apply to college the way our parents and their generation dealt with us — send her to her room to fill out the application form alone? When she gets good and “motivated” (translation: tired, bored, panic-stricken, sick of being badgered), the application will magically get done. After all, the rationale goes, if a student isn’t motivated enough to fill out an application, how will she make it through college?
Parents who accept this line of thinking generally have children who are less successful at getting into more competitive colleges. More involved parents tend to have more success. Involvement ranges from playing a cheer-leading role, to agreeing to be responsible for the dull but essential book-keeping chores (maintaining files, monitoring deadlines and photo-copying to keep copies of every paper submitted), to brainstorming, reading and discussing the student’s essays.

Don’t relax with the notion that the college your son is aiming for accepts 1,500 or 3,000 or 10,000 students, so the odds are in his favor. Colleges take pride in admitting each student — one individual at a time. Your daughter must have her own sought-after desirable qualities. If not, create some while there’s still time. Remember, most of the most desirable colleges reject far more kids than they accept. So if you’re counting on your child “getting in with the flow,” the flow isn’t getting admitted.