SILVER SPARROW * THE GATEKEEPERS

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones - Silver Sparrow was so good that it made me forget all the good books that came before it.  I didn't want it to end, but because it was about young people and their decisions, eventually it had to end because otherwise we'd be reading a different story.  It's about family and secrets and double lives and the way it feels to be on either side of the same situation.  It tries to explore the motivation of the one who was mainly responsible for all that happened, but as is often the case, the explanation is wanting since good people do bad things and bad people do good things, and sometimes things happen that cause the person to be good or bad in the moments, and once the deed is done, everyone can only go forward one day at a time.  

The Gatekeepers Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College by Jacques Steinberg - I kind of wish I'd read this in the years before Peter applied to college, but am also glad that I didn't.  What a contrived and fixed process that hand picks a group of high school seniors to be part of a class at a "Premier College" - it has to be diverse, but everyone has to have a certain level of grade  and test scores.  Then everyone has to write an essay or two that will turn the heads of the admissions officers.  Then, everyone has to have talents and something "extra" that they'll bring to the school.  And finally, in this book we learn that Harvard turns down 1 out of 4 of the applicants with 800/800 which is a perfect score on the SAT.  I don't know what the better way is, but I do know that you get a  homogeneous majority with this system.  There is a system here and it's worked by the people at the colleges, by the people at the good high schools and by the people at the testing companies.  Like any lucrative business, money is fueling the process all over the place, and because so many students apply to so many schools, there is no way of knowing whether there would have been enough spots for everyone at their first choice if applied to fewer schools.  The early decision process begins to address this, but with early decision, only a small part of a class is formed.  So the people with the money get tutors, hire test prep help and apply to all the top schools on the US News list.  Then out of their ten or twenty applications, they choose to go to one school.  It's a confusing math question and it seems like they are all reacting to each other.  I wonder what the math would show if someone could figure out the problem.