Daniel Golden is a Pulitzer Prize winner, so it goes without saying that this is sturdily written, carefully reported and documented book. One need not look further than its title to understand that it tells a story that it not especially flattering to the institutions it covers. This is a story that was badly in need of telling, and Americans should be concerned about its implications.

It's a bit dry at times, but it really does expose just one more privilege that upper class, famous, well-connected white people have. My favorite part of the book is the chapter about Caltech, Cooper Union and Berea colleges. They are all 100% merit based and turn a totally blind eye to all other factors, and how they still get donations and they don't struggle financially whatsoever.

The book is good, it's actually made me feel almost guilty at being a legacy myself. Although I didn't go to an elite school by any stretch of the imagination, and I am more than certain I would have gotten into my alma mater regardless (I was in the top 15% of my HS class and got great scores on the SAT and ACT), but, still, I wonder about the blank on the application form where I wrote in my dad's name and class year.

Thinking about all of the privileges that the upper class is privy to makes my blood boil as well, especially the few times I made the mistake of reading the Weekend section of the Wall Street Journal. ( )

If only I'd known I'd be a future crossword champion, I probably would have gotten into the schools that rejected me (Will Shortz's proteges do extremely well in college admissions). Or perhaps if a parent was a huge celebrity, active legacy alum, or zillionaire. Or if I'd played an obscure sport (nope, crosswords aren't a sport). This book talks about all those things (not the crossword angle). It's a little disheartening, but that's reality. As an example not discussed in the book - assuming she's remotely qualified, would any college reject Emma Watson? Yet I have my doubts she'll return to graduate Brown. Many of these child stars leave to continue their careers (hello, Olsens!), which admittedly are more happening than sitting in a classroom. ( )

The first two chapters of this book? Totally gripping. The through-the-looking-glass world of Harvard legacy admissions: people with twelve generations of alumni ancestors (not even mathematically possible at my college; not even close), the lifestyles of people far richer than I will ever be, open secret webs of influence...spicy! At the end of it I felt totally lucky that I -- without legacies, without the promise of enormous donations, without sports on my side, et cetera, just a smart kid from West Virginia -- made it into college at all.

But then, see, the next chapter was exactly the same, with "Harvard" swapped out for some other prestigious school, and "legacy" swapped out for some other admissions preference.

The author is a journalist, the book grew from newspaper articles, and it shows; he has fantastic anecdotes that carry a story along briefly, but doesn't have an overarching argument or a logical structure beyond thematic grouping of near-identical anecdotes. Each chapter would nearly stand on its own as a newspaper or magazine article, but they don't stand *together*.

Furthermore (see _Game of Shadows_), this book suffers from another pet peeve -- the assumption that its audience is equally as outraged about the topic as the author. He has a few anecdotes of kids who have lost out in the admissions game, but no systematic or thoughtful argument as to why, exactly, we should hate preferences in college admission so much. No argument about the validity of the aims colleges seek through admissions preferences or, if those are valid aims, how else we can achieve them. I feel pretty dirty thinking about a lot of those things -- they certainly puncture the myth of meritocracy in uncomfortable ways -- but I can see a way more nuanced picture than Golden seems to, and the fact that he doesn't engage with those nuances robs him of credibility.

I ended up skipping most of the middle chapters, to see if the end -- his examples of colleges doing well without legacy privilege -- have anything helpful or insightful to say. Alas, not really. His big examples are Caltech and Berea, and if you know anything about these schools at all, you know that they are highly unusual. They're highly unusual in very different ways, but they both are tiny schools with narrowly defined missions and unusual, self-selecting applicant pools, and as such there's no reason to think their solutions scale to the world at large. (Indeed, perhaps they can only compete as successfully as they do for applicants and donors in a world where most people are playing a very different game!)

It was fun reading about Caltech and all (I attended a similar school and felt cultural affinities with his Caltech interviewees), but ultimately this man didn't have an argument, just a laundry list of outrage. I hate books without arguments, I hate laundry lists as structures, and I hate outrage. Two stars. ( )