Try this, much more recent, just the first post which includes the letter. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1632160-christoph-guttentags-letter-demystifying-admission-process-at-duke-p1.html
Personally, I wince at these supposed insider books. Hernandez, eg, hasn’t been directly involved in admissions decisions since something like 2003. An ice age ago, in admissions.
If you really want to be helpful to your HS (helps your own kid plus the next generation to follow) you can start by working at the district level to rename or to normalize the names of any HS courses that do not follow typical nomenclature.
Some bureaucrat renames a tough senior English course which has rigorous reading and writing requirements as “topics in contemporary fiction”. Junior year honors chemistry gets named “material science workshop”.
If your HS does not have the traditional AP curriculum AND has a boho course description, your kids will get shortchanged when the adcom’s score the transcripts.
And while you are at it- vet the district level description of the school system for accuracy. Many are out of date, to the detriment of your kids. The GC sends in the narrative which describes “We offer 15 AP classes” and your HS only has 5. “5% of students are on reduced or free lunch” when the current number is 35%". that sort of thing. In some towns, nobody has looked at this is 15 years and that can be a long time in an area which has experienced a lot of demographic or funding changes in the school system.
At YOUR HS, a “workshop” can imply gifted and talented. In most school systems, that implies resource room/intervention level. Better to have conforming titles.
As an example, in 2001, Duke had 14,647 apps and accepted under 3600. Guttentag’s letter notes 32000 for 1700 slots.
" I think Duke (at least at this time) had a reputation for very aggressively courting influential alums and/or donors. I don’t think things are this extreme at other elite schools."
That’s always been the stereotype at Duke, starting with when they admitted Ralph Lauren’s kids. They have long had the reputation for “dipping low” to court celebs and moneyed alums. FWIW.
Well, I get that they whack (i.e., don’t read, just check off two data points and round file it) a bunch off the top to start the process, and I’m sure the cut-offs vary by school.
The point, though, is that such a process will miss good students who will do well in college. That’s just the nature of the beast when your goal is to attract as many applicants as possible, and you’re admitting a class of thousands. You’re necessarily going to have a quality control problem.
There is nothing special about school or admissions that makes it unique or any different than any other aspect of work life. Whenever you have too few people doing too much work, the quality of work suffers. It’s axiomatic and simple.
“The point, though, is that such a process will miss good students who will do well in college. That’s just the nature of the beast when your goal is to attract as many applicants as possible, and you’re admitting a class of thousands. You’re necessarily going to have a quality control problem.”
It’s only a “problem” if there were only 10 colleges in the country that offered good educations. There are many, so the only “problem” is that you can’t be assured of being able to brag to your friends that your kid got into a top 20 school.
@Pizzagirl From what I have seen around the country, most, if not all, independent K-12 schools and colleges seem to like celebs and big money. Never heard of one that didn’t. Not just a Duke phenomenon.
Does anyone disagree?
I can’t imagine any of the development kids at Duke could be lower standard than some of the basketball players admitted.
@Pizzagirl, I’m struggling (even with helpful air quotes) to understand your response to my post. I’m not setting policy here; I’m just talking about admissions processes, and some of the flaws inherent therein. What it means from 50,000 feet is well beyond my concern and influence. Moreover, many, if not the majority of the “top 20 schools” to which you refer are not the target of my comments; and you might consider there are other reasons for wanting to send your kids to a highly regarded school.
But thanks for trying to help a man who has two, and soon 3, kids in college understand his options. We’re all good here.
@Dolemite Actually the few players I met at Duke in the old days were quite bright. Grant Hill was in my MBA program there. Coach K wants smart and talented kids. He is a top role model for all coaches.
No disagreement, except different schools set different bars in terms what makes “celebs and big money” to them.
UC applications include self-reported high school courses and grades, and do not include any external items that need to be matched with the application (e.g. recommendations) other than SAT or ACT scores. From the application itself, any GPAs and other calculations from the high school courses and grades can be calculated in an automated fashion to be included when the application is presented (presumably electronically) to an admissions reader. Note also that UC maintains a database of courses at California public and private high schools, so that the categorization of each course and whether it is considered an “honors” course is automatically done when the applicant lists the course on the application.
Of course, they still have to hire lots of admissions readers to give each application two reads (each reader gives the application a score; if they differ too much, a senior reader does a third read to assign the score). Once all of the applications are scored, they are ranked (within division and major, if applicable). If the cutoff is within a set of applications with the same score, tie-breaking is done within that group.
Note that there is no centralized admission committee that all applications have to be presented to after initial readings, unlike at some other schools. Such a centralized admission committee who reads all applications would be a bottleneck at a school with 100,000 applications. This is presumably why the UC admissions reading methodology is designed the way it is.
@MOMANDBOYSTWO K does a great job of getting some really bright and talented players but basically like all programs at Duke’s level they make plenty of exceptions of players that fall well below the lowest metrics of the non-athletes.
“such a process will miss good students who will do well in college” There’s no room for nice guessing when you have that much competition from tippy top kids. I don;t know what college or what level you mean whacks without reading.
I can tell stories about celebs and very wealthy, even family names you would recognize, who were dropped from consideration for various reasons, none having to do with yield. And development kids- remember, these families have long relationships with their dev reps. If the kid is subpar, there are diplomatic ways to suggest his chances are low.
Athletes: I really dislike when academic weakness is trumped by sports strengths.
By “weakness” do you mean to the level where the athletic recruit applicant would not have significant chance of admission if his/her sport were merely considered a high achievement extracurricular, rather than something fulfilling the school’s wish list for sports teams?
@lookingforward , I hear you. Likewise, I really dislike when physical inferiority is trumped by intellectual elitism. 
" ‘such a process will miss good students who will do well in college’ There’s no room for nice guessing when you have that much competition from tippy top kids. I don;t know what college or what level you mean whacks without reading."
oversimplification and missing the point almost entirely.
Ucb, stories where athletes struggle to make it through classes. Kids who, to put it one way, have no business at a demanding college- not only because they will struggle, but for the missed chance to be empowered by the academic side of the college experience. This is different than kids who need ordinary academic support or attention.
@lookingforward I am not an athlete, but I do think that big sports can make a college way more fun. I went to an Ivy League for undergrad where no one goes to the football games — or really any of the sports events, except maybe hockey. That would be all of the Ivies, right? Then my son went to USC, where the whole state of CA goes to the football games. It was a blast! Tailgates. Big, talented band. Stanford games where the silly tree mascot floated around the field. I had a ball at Parents’ Weekends! Many of those football players are not Einstein, but their contribution to that campus is unquantifiable. (Is that a word?). I wish my undergrad had had that level of enthusiasm and spirit, even if it meant having a few kids with SAT scores below the average.
Duke has a similar vibe with basketball, but only so many people can fit in the Cameron Indoor Stadium.
By the way, there are plenty of strong athletes who are also amazing students.