by Mitchell L. Stevens
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Product Description
In real life, Mitchell Stevens is a professor in bustling New York. But for a year and a half, he worked in the admissions office of a bucolic New England college that is known for its high academic standards, beautiful campus, and social conscience. Ambitious high schoolers and savvy guidance counselors know that admission here is highly competitive. But creating classes, Stevens finds, is a lot more complicated than most people imagine. Admissions officers love students but they work for the good of the school. They must bring each class in "on budget," burnish the statistics so crucial to institutional prestige, and take care of their colleagues in the athletic department and the development office. Stevens shows that the job cannot be done without "systematic preferencing," and racial affirmative action is the least of it. Kids have an edge if their parents can pay full tuition, if they attend high schools with exotic zip codes, if they are athletes--especially football players--and even if they are popular. With novelistic flair, sensitivity to history, and a keen eye for telling detail, Stevens explains how elite colleges and universities have assumed their central role in the production of the nation's most privileged classes. Creating a Class makes clear that, for better or worse, these schools now define the standards of youthful accomplishment in American culture more generally.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Thoughtful look at admissions process and its implications, 2008-10-14
Creating a Class is an excellent read. It's much more thoughtful than many other books on college admissions, as its intention is not only to give its reader an "insider's view" of competitive admissions (based on Stevens' work in the admissions office of a small college), but to call into question how the admissions process may help create and sustain class inequities. As a result, I left the book with not only a better sense of how selective institutions make their decisions, but with a set of questions (some troublesome) about the class implications of the process.
Although the book raises some important sociological questions, it's not an overly 'academic' read. I found Mitchell's prose clear, easy to read, and often eloquent without being unnecessarily flowery. In fact, Mitchell's book is quite fun because his questions are raised through the characters (students, administrators, counselors, coaches, etc.) he encounters during his field research; this gives the book a novel-like feel. He treats those characters fairly and warmly.
Highly recommened for those who are going through the process (either as students or parents) or for those who have an interest in educational sociology.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Creating a class - an ethnography on private college admissions process, 2008-08-17
Stevens does a very good job of portraying the setting of a small liberal arts instituion which works to create the best freshman class possible under competitive circumstances.
The author finds the process more complex than imagined as the admissions office is charged with bringing in a class to help improve the status of the college and to serve the needs of the development office as well as the athletic department. The book describes how elite colleges and universities have assumed a central role in producing the nation's most privileged classes. The author found that individual evaluation protocols do not create equal educational opportunity but subtly reinforce class privilege.
Overall, I think this book is a great read for parents of students, and students as well, in high school and many parts really captured the work we do each day to prepare our children to be competitive for this next step in their lives.
7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
A nice companion reading to Jacques Steinberg's Gatekeepers, 2008-02-01
An interesting analysis. Writing is digestable.
The College is Hamilton College (i.e. football coach left after one year).
Jacques Steinberg's musings in Gatekeepers is just as sophisticated as analysis in this book. Just because Stevens uses academic jargon like "status" over and over (in the text and in footnotes ("catalytic conversation" with a fellow professor)), and smugly refers to "journalists" does not mean that Stevens' work is any more sophisticated. As young scholar in the process of establishing his reputation in the academia, Stevens wallows in academic lingo, and his prose also suffers in the process. Stevens' prose is not as lean nor muscular as the prose in Preparing for Power (Cookson et al).
One caveat: Hamilton is in an awkward position of being a good liberal arts college, which has a significantly less name recognition than the Ivy League, and schools like Williams, Amherst, or Wesleyan for that matter. Hence, Hamilton's admissions officers complaining of some prep schools of sending only "schlocky" kids.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Best Book on Admissions in 2007, 2008-01-28
Creating a Class isn't the typical how to get into a college, or just an insider view designed to help you play the system. It asks hard hard questions, and doesn't let anyone off the hook. It made me think more than any book I read this year.
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