A Is for Admission: The Insider's Guide to Getting into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges

Refreshingly, Hernandez helps would-be Ivy Leaguers keep their goals in perspective. She strongly advises against "grade grubbing" or "working for the grade." If you think attending a top college is the key to success, Hernandez cautions that the Ivies may not be for you. "If your goal is to make money, but you don't enjoy studying or reading, don't waste your time by trying to get into an Ivy League or highly selective college.... The beauty of an Ivy League/highly selective education lies in the intellectual atmosphere.... It does not lie in the prestige of having a diploma from Princeton or Dartmouth on your wall." Levelheaded and clearly written, A Is for Admission is the perfect guide for the student (or parent) who has his eyes set on the stars.

Product Description
For generations, the admissions process of the Ivy League schools and other top colleges has been cloaked in mystery and myth. Now Michele A. Hernandez, a former admissions officer at Dartmouth, finally breaks the ancient code of silence to reveal how the world's most highly selective schools really make their decisions. With absolute candor, Hernandez tells you all the hard truths, provides all the secrets, reveals how admission officers factor in every extenuating circumstance, and, most importantly, she shows you how to make this complex, high-stakes system work for you. Thorough, direct, and written for real results, A IS FOR ADMISSION answers the questions asked by countless students: * What do admissions officers really look for and what turns them off? * How are test scores and grades truly evaluated? * Does applying for early decision hurt or help you get in to the college of your choice? * How can you improve the chances of acceptance?

The author is a true insider, as she was an admission officer at Dartmouth for four years. She uncovers many insights about Ivy League admission that the other books do not.

By reading this book, you will get an in depth knowledge about peculiar formulas used by the Ivies, including the Academic Index, and its subset the Converted Rank Score (CRS). The CRS indicates that the Ivies do not care so much about GPAs, which at the top level does not differentiate between candidates, but they care instead about class rank.

Another factor that is key is the strength of your curriculum (honors and AP classes). If you took easy classes to get As, forget it, your 4.0 GPA will be discounted accordingly.

According to the author, test scores are crucial. They account for 2/3 of the Academic Index points. And, academic factors account for 70 to 85% of the overall admission decision. Also, the SAT IIs are as important as the SAT Is. This is a fact most ignore by over preparing for the SAT Is by spending big bucks on prep classes (Princeton Review, Kaplan, etc...) , but not spending much energy on preparing for the SAT IIs. This is a major strategic error.

It goes without saying that the Ivy League is incredibly competitive. The average SAT score of the Dartmouth freshman class is 1415! So, to distinguish yourself as a better than average applicant you have to score over 1430 on your SATs and do equally well on your SAT IIs. Obviously, this is no small feat for common mortals.

What makes the admission game even harder is that so many applicants get accepted under preferential treatments. About 39% of the freshman class at Dartmouth got in under such favored status. These include athletes on scholarship, legacy students, VIPs, and minorities. If you are among any of these groups, it will be significantly easier for you to get in; otherwise, refer to the paragraph just above.

The acceptance rate between applicants coming from public schools and private ones is virtually the same. So, save your money for college tuition. Expensive elite private schools do not have an inside track to the Ivies, regardless of what they say in their ads.

If you are on the Wait List, or are a Transfer applicant, unless you are very idealistic and bounce back well from setbacks, you better forget it. Both situations stack the odds against you big time.

A much more favorable position is to be a strong candidate and go the Early Admission or Decision route. The author shares excellent data indicating that in all cases with all the Ivy League schools the acceptance rate during the ED period is nearly double the one during the regular period.

Another excellent characteristic of this book is that the author shares a most balanced perspective on extra curricular factors, including: community involvement, essay, letter of recommendation, and interview. Essentially, if you are a top-notch applicant, these factors will really not matter much. If you are a not so good one, it won't matter either. You will not make the cut. But, if you are in the grey area, then a brilliant essay, great letter of recommendations, out of this world interview may be tipping points in your favor. Yet, all of those intangibles may not even help you out if you are Wait listed.

In conclusion, this is an excellent book that gives you a most realistic assessment of what the admission process is like at Ivy League schools. There are really no tricks, no short cuts, you just have to be a world-class student. As described, you will get much insight about this mysterious admission process. But, better awareness does not mean you can crack the game. In this respect, this book is a cut above other ones who convey that an excellent essay or excellent letter of recommendation can make up for relative mediocrity in the more important academic areas. This is just not true. And, this book tells you why.


Demystifying, informative look at the application process   February 5, 2004
29 out of 30 found this review helpful

College applications are a mystifying process. With directions often never exceeding a sentence or two, students are often left with the question "Well, what exactly DO they want from me?" Well, this book tells you.

Mrs. Hernandez's brutally honest look into the application process lays everything out crystal clear for the reader to see. As they say, knowing is half the battle, and knowing how top colleges look at your application let you tailor your application so that the best qualities of you are shown. It also offers plenty of good advice on what to do if you're a NKB (Nice kid, but...) and aren't one of those people with a 1600 and have published their own bestselling novel.

The only warning I would have is that college admissions has gotten exponentially harder over the past 5 years since this book was published, and what is said in the book about Academic 7, 8 and 9's (i.e. the most academically qualified)isn't as true as it was five years ago. Current academic 7 8 9's would do well to take a look at the advice given to 4, 5, 6's as nothing is guaranteed in today's crapshoot that we call college admissions. Particularly, I feel the essay has become more and more important in differentiating between top qualified students.

Parents ought to start reading this book before their kid is in high school, so they can sort of guide their children in the right direction, but please please PLEASE don't give this book to kids until the start of their summer before senior year. I would shudder to think of a kid whose entire four years of high school were spent scheming about how to get into Harvard; high school is simply not a stepping stone into college, it's a time of learning to be taken in it's own right.

Overall, this was truly a wonderful book written in a straightforward, easily readable fashion that did loads for me in taking much of the guesswork out of college apps. Combine this with Harry Bauld's book on writing the college essay to truly make your application stand out. Also, if you plan on doing the Common Application, check out her other book on the Common Application. I haven't read it, but any little advantage you can get will only help you into getting into your first choice school.


Satisfied customer   October 30, 1999
34 out of 37 found this review helpful

The book offers a much-needed dose of reality for anyone approaching the competitive world of college admissions. While the author relies on her experience on Dartmouth's staff, general concepts can be gleaned and applied to other competitive schools. The book is particularly helpful to those unfamiliar with the subject and gives an idea of what to expect from the mysterious and uncertain selection process.

Hernandez' book is specifically designed for ivy-caliber schools and does not purport to help unqualified students gain admission to highly selective colleges. It is more of a common-sense manual that helps candidates within range improve their chances by maximizing their attributes and submitting flattering and reasonably polished applications.

Helpful suggestions are offered, such as pitfalls to avoid in personal essays and strategies for tackling wait list purgatory. Complicated statistical tables and analyses are provided; interpreting the data may require some degree of sophistication.

"A is for Admission" is written in a chatty, informal style that is highly entertaining. The humor should help relax even the most anxious of readers.


Excellent insights into how it really works.   April 26, 1999
Marmez1@aol.com (Los Angeles, CA USA)
85 out of 102 found this review helpful

Getting your kid into a good college is a nerve-racking process for most parents. It certainly has been for us. We have found the customer reviews in Amazon very helpful. That prompts us to distill our ratings of the various guidebooks.

The best short reference on each college is the Princeton Review of The Best (311) Colleges. It gives ratings of academic quality, difficulty of admission, percentage admitted, etc. There is also a brief summary of college life and what each place might be looking for.

Peterson Guide is comprehensive, and has long write-ups for each school. There is a front section for each school, listed alphabetically within each state, and a back section with detailed profiles of selected institutions.

Fiske's guide is interesting, but he basically has something good to say for each school, so careful reading between the lines and for "damning with faint praise" is called for.

The Yale Insider's Guide is extremely subjective, with different students writing various reviews. We did not find it too reliable, except in conjunction with other books.

Likewise for Barrron's Guide to the Most Competitive Colleges. Recent alumni write of their (invariably positive) experiences. Take it with a grain of salt, or read carefully between the lines.

Choosing the Right College by ISN was extremely helpful. Some readers criticized it for being allegedly right wing. We did not find it so. Rather, knowing the point of view of the authors helped us evaluate their observations. Other books do not make their biases explicit. A feature of the book we found particularly helpful was the naming of excellent professors and departments in each college.

Antonoff's College Finder was interesting only in conjunction with other books.

Three books written from the perspective of college admissions officers were very interesting and helpful. They are The College Admissions Mystique, by Mayher, Getting In, by Bill Paul, and most of all A is for Admission by Michelle Hernandez. We strongly recommend that parents and the kids who are the applicants read at least one of these.

Another very helpful book was You're Gonna Love This College Guide, by Marty Nemko. It takes the student through the decision process of big vs. small, urban vs. country, elite vs. the level just below, geography, and so forth. That really got our daughter unstuck in her thinking process.

Loren Pope is another helpful author for those who think that not getting into Harvard is the end of the world.

Three books we did not find to be particularly helpful are Getting Into Any College, by Jim Good and Lisa Lee, The National Review College Guide, by Charles Sykes and Brad Miner (too out of date), and The Real Freshman Handbook, by Jennifer Hanson.

One book we found to be unexpectedly useful was Getting Into Medical School Today, by Scott Plantz, et. al. Even if your child is not interested in medical school, this book puts college in perspective for any post-college program.

We hope readers find our review helpful.


This Applies to Schools Beyond the Ivies   May 29, 2006
Miami Bob (Miami, FL United States)
17 out of 18 found this review helpful

Sometimes, you get lucky. For instance, this book writes about the extremely difficult time people have in getting admitted into the Ivies. Since the printing of the book in the 20th century, certain facts have made the book's lessons more poignant for the Ivies and very pertinent to many other schools.

When the book was written, the low admissions percentages for the less competitive Ivies were still lower than the vast majority of non-Ivies. Now, those low numbers pale in contrast to many midwestern LAC's, do not even compare to some of the Claremont Colleges or mini-Ivies, and are only a shadow of what that particular school accepts with today's Generation Y. The competitveness will supposedly reach its height in two years -- just in time for my youngest.

So, you may ask, what does this have to do with the "other schools?" Everything. It gives you a perspective of what the people on the other side of the application encounter. Hundreds, if not thousands, of truly worthy applications come across their desks each year. But, the school's admittance numbers are finite. How the schools hone the masses to the select few is -- amazingly -- a quantitative system which (for the most part) is fair. The author mentions the inequities which arise in the system, but when reviewing the measuring of the Academic Index (AI) and its 3-part formula of SAT + SAT 2 + CRS), the schools most often get to the fairest result.

(For the curious, go to http://63.135.109.195/hernandez/ai_calculator.cfm for a quick summary of this formula.)

This book also warns you not to buy many of the other books peddled by others out there -- she even warns us about one book printed by her very own publisher. One example of these books' false promises: a great essay will get the student in the competitive schools. But, we learn the opposite. Fairly enough, the essay will not even be reviewed unless the AI meets a certain level. So, do not buy the "great essay that got people into Ivies" books thinking the great essay is all one needs for admission. In fact, unless you have 700 SAT's, the essay probably will NOT even be read!!!

After reading about the AI, take your own numbers, plug them into the formulaic equation (see internet address above), and you will soon see whether you should shoot for the moon or be more modest in your college goals.

If you discover that modesty is the best policy -- I highly recommend reading my favorite college book: "Colleges That Change Lives : 40 Schools You Should Know About Even If You're Not a Straight-A Student" by Loren Pope. If that is enjoyed, try a related book: "Greenes' Guides to Educational Planning: The Hidden Ivies : Thirty Colleges of Excellence (Greenes' Guides to Educational Planning)" by Howard Greene.

And, like those books tell you, education will very likely be more enjoyable in the smaller nurturing environments of the listed LAC's.