Overview

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 counsellors 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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9780674026735

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Reviews

Mitchell Stevens gives a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of how prestigious colleges make [admissions] decisions and shows how what they decide has shaped the lifestyle and values of upper-middle-class America...It is his first-hand experience that makes the book such a gem--Stevens' narrative brings us into the thought-world of the admissions office itself, allowing the reader to view the process from the inside out. -- Jordan Hylden First Things (04/01/2008)

Author Information

Mitchell L. Stevens is Associate Professor of Education and Sociology at New York University.

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