Valedictorians at the Gate: Standing Out, Getting In, and Staying Sane While Applying to College

by Becky Munsterer Sabky

Overview

Named one of Grown & Flown's “Best Book on College Admissions and Paying for College”

“The most honest, most helpful book I’ve ever read on applying to college”
—New York Times bestselling author Adam Grant

A former Ivy League Admissions Officer offers an inspiring battle cry for sanity in the college application process that looks beyond the rankings to successfully determine what’s truly the best school for you or your child.

After spending years as a college admissions director at Dartmouth, Becky Munsterer Sabky had seen it all. The perfect grades, the perfect scores, and the perfect extracurriculars. Valedictorians were knocking at the gate, but Becky realized that in their quest for admission many of these students were missing something. Their transcripts were golden, their interviews polished, but they weren’t applying for college, they were competing for it—and in the end they didn’t know what prize they were really striving for.

In Valedictorians at the Gate, Sabky looks beyond the smoke and mirrors of the intimidating admissions gauntlet and places the power firmly where it should be: in the hands of the students themselves. Offering prescriptive, actionable advice for students and their (hopefully not helicoptering) parents, Sabky illuminates the pathway to finding the school that is the ideal match.

Witty and warm, informative and inspiring, Valedictorians at the Gate is the needed tonic for overstressed, overworked, and overwhelmed students on their way to the perfect college for them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250619037
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/03/2021
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	1,101,810
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Becky Munsterer Sabky is a former director of international admissions at Dartmouth College. She’s a graduate of Colby College and received her master of arts in liberal studies degree from Dartmouth. Based in Vermont, she is also an award-winning monthly newspaper columnist, a blogger, and the author of a children’s books series entitled The Little Rippers.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

1 The Big Picture 1

The College Search

2 First Steps 17

3 Creating the Right College List 29

4 The Campus Visit 34

5 Coming to a High School Near You 46

The Application

6 The School Report 61

7 Recommendations 75

8 Extracurrsculars 86

9 Testing 97

10 The Personal Statement 110

11 Supplemental Essays 118

12 Submitting the Application 122

13 Alumni Interviews 132

Special Considerations

14 A Word on Early 143

15 International Applicants 148

16 Recruited Athletes 157

Postdecision

17 Decision Day 169

18 Admitted Student Events 183

19 Welcome to College 191

20 Best in Class 202

Works Consulted 211

Acknowledgments 219

Editorial Reviews

"Becky Munsterer Sabky is an expert on college admissions - an insider generous enough to share her experiences behind the closed doors of ivy league college admissions. Valedictorians at the Gate is the perfect combination of story, information, and advice, offering a much-needed dose of sanity around the process of college admissions."
- Jessica Lahey, New York Times bestselling author of The Gift of Failure

"Valedictorians at the Gate isn’t just an unmissable guide for every budding college applicant (and anxious parent); this is essential reading for all of us. Ms. Sabky draws upon her rich experience as an Ivy League admissions director to illuminate the strange and shadowed world of admits, denys, and defers. With humor, empathy, and keen insight, she shows us what matters, and what doesn’t, at the threshold of higher education."
- Adam Benforado, professor and New York Times bestselling author of Unfair

From the Publisher

07/01/2021

Sabky provides an insider's perspective on the admissions process at Dartmouth College and other highly selective U.S. colleges and universities. As a high schooler, she herself applied to Dartmouth but wasn't admitted; she describes this as a humbling experience that spurred her to excel at Colby College, thrive as an eventual Dartmouth graduate student, and become "a more sympathetic admissions officer" later at Dartmouth, where she worked for more than 10 years. Her book is organized into sections on choosing a school, applying, attending campus events after being admitted, and more—though she doesn't discuss financial aid. Sabky also covers early decision, international applications, and athletic recruitment. The emphasis is on applying rather than competing, and Sabky encourages students to consider "learning for the sake of learning" rather than to bolster an application. She offers valuable insight into how colleges try to build competitive pools of future students by focusing on diversity, selectivity, and college needs. Her work is engaging, edifying, and even humorous at times. VERDICT Recommended for students interested in applying to highly selective institutions.—Elizabeth Connor, Daniel Lib., The Citadel, Military Coll. of South Carolina, Charleston

Library Journal

2021-05-27
A look at the complex process of college admissions.

Drawing on 13 years of experience as an admissions officer, most spent at Dartmouth, Sabky offers practical, down-to-earth advice about choosing a college, navigating the application process, and deciding which college to attend. Like Frank Bruni’s Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, this book emphasizes that an Ivy League school may not be the best choice for everyone, nor does rejection stamp a student as unworthy. College admission, writes Sabky, “is a business at nearly every institution,” with decisions “based on the whole of each candidacy, the depth of the pool, and the desires of the institution.” Highly selective schools actively recruit as many students as possible in order to keep their admissions rate low, with the result that many outstanding students are rejected. Nevertheless, to help students be as competitive as possible, Sabky gives tips on “self-marketing” in a process that “has become one of the most complicated hurdles of the American education system.” That process often begins with a campus visit (or online visit for students unable to travel), during which the author advises that students range off the prescribed path to see parts of the campus that really interest them. For the application—which she typically would spend about 12 minutes reading—she has thoughts on the transcript, recommendations, extracurricular activities, test scores, alumni interviews, and especially the importance of authenticity in the personal statement. That essay, she writes, should “share a story, a vision, a thought. The purpose of an essay was never to win an award.” Sabky regrets that the admission process turns students “into laser-focused robots for a chance at the college dream” and glorifies the Ivy Leagues. “There’s no need to turn into an Ivy clinger,” she writes reassuringly, “when there are thousands of wonderful colleges and universities in the United States.”

Sound advice for prospective college students and their families.

Kirkus Reviews