Here are 60 books that Admission fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am passionate about talent development and college access. I started my journey as a researcher when I learned that high school valedictorians’ adult success depends in large part on their race, social class, and gender. This work led me to life-long questions. How do we recognize talent and give young people opportunities without requiring their total assimilation into the dominant culture? How do we change our schools and colleges to welcome everyone and to benefit from the viewpoints and voices of all of our students? Answering these questions is imperative for our collective well-being in our changing society and world.
What is it really like to work at the top echelons of science research? Go no further than this book, a riveting collective biography of women scientists at MIT who conducted world-class research in departments with more Nobel Prize winners than women.
Even though I knew how the story turned out, I was riveted by the hardships, brilliant tactics, and eventual triumph of the women researchers who fought and won the battle for equal treatment at “The Institute.” Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who originally reported the story as it unfolded.
'Outstanding' Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry
The remarkable untold story of how a group of sixteen determined women used the power of the collective and the tools of science to inspire ongoing radical change. This is a triumphant account of progress, whilst reminding us that further action is needed.
These women scientists entered the work force in the 1960s during a push for affirmative action. Embarking on their careers they thought that discrimination against women was a thing of the past and that science was a pure meritocracy. Women were marginalized and minimized, especially as they grew…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am passionate about talent development and college access. I started my journey as a researcher when I learned that high school valedictorians’ adult success depends in large part on their race, social class, and gender. This work led me to life-long questions. How do we recognize talent and give young people opportunities without requiring their total assimilation into the dominant culture? How do we change our schools and colleges to welcome everyone and to benefit from the viewpoints and voices of all of our students? Answering these questions is imperative for our collective well-being in our changing society and world.
This book opened my eyes to how higher education actually works to advance social mobility for a few while primarily reproducing social inequality. I was amazed to learn that the way that today’s elite universities select among applicants started as a solution for limiting the enrollment of “outsiders.”
Top universities feared that having too many of these outsiders would lower the status of the institution and make it less attractive to the ruling class. Beginning with Jewish students, continuing with Black students, and now emerging with Asian and low-income students, this pattern continues and affects our entire society.
A landmark, revelatory history of admissions from 1900 to today—and how it shaped a nation
The competition for a spot in the Ivy League—widely considered the ticket to success—is fierce and getting fiercer. But the admissions policies of elite universities have long been both tightly controlled and shrouded in secrecy. In The Chosen, the Berkeley sociologist Jerome Karabel lifts the veil on a century of admission and exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. How did the policies of our elite schools evolve? Whom have they let in and why? And what do those policies say about America?
I am passionate about talent development and college access. I started my journey as a researcher when I learned that high school valedictorians’ adult success depends in large part on their race, social class, and gender. This work led me to life-long questions. How do we recognize talent and give young people opportunities without requiring their total assimilation into the dominant culture? How do we change our schools and colleges to welcome everyone and to benefit from the viewpoints and voices of all of our students? Answering these questions is imperative for our collective well-being in our changing society and world.
It turns out that privilege, entitlement, and lofty ambition are baked into every aspect of the top private boarding schools in the United States. The authors are two sociologists who took me behind the scenes of an elite school whose graduates are subtly—and not so subtly—groomed for power and success.
On magnificent residential high school campuses, students are surrounded by wealthy peers, portraits of celebrated alumni on the walls, seminar-style academic debates, famous guest speakers, and more. The authors paint a convincing and readable account of how exclusive schools imbue their students with the habits, dispositions, and ambitions to join society’s elites.
Why do private boarding schools produce such a disproportionate number of leaders in business, government, and the arts? In the most comprehensive study of its kind to date, two sociologists describe the complex ways in which elite schools prepare students for success and power, and they also provide a lively behind-the-scenes look at prep-school life and underlife.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I am passionate about talent development and college access. I started my journey as a researcher when I learned that high school valedictorians’ adult success depends in large part on their race, social class, and gender. This work led me to life-long questions. How do we recognize talent and give young people opportunities without requiring their total assimilation into the dominant culture? How do we change our schools and colleges to welcome everyone and to benefit from the viewpoints and voices of all of our students? Answering these questions is imperative for our collective well-being in our changing society and world.
Lorene Cary tells her own story of attending an elite boarding school through a talent-search program for low-income students of color. Lorene’s experience shows vividly the costs of being a token in a setting of privilege.
This vivid memoir was dismaying to me as someone who wants students to have opportunities to realize their potential by having access to top-quality schools.
In 1972 Lorene Cary, a bright, ambitious black teenager from Philadelphia, was transplanted into the formerly all-white, all-male environs of the elite St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, where she became a scholarship student in a "boot camp" for future American leaders. Like any good student, she was determined to succeed. But Cary was also determined to succeed without selling out. This wonderfully frank and perceptive memoir describes the perils and ambiguities of that double role, in which failing calculus and winning a student election could both be interpreted as betrayals of one's skin. Black Ice is also a universally…
Growing up with a severe disability and being an advocate from a very young age has taught me a lot of hard lessons. I struggled and endured a tremendous amount of bullying and discrimination, so I tend to pick books that I can relate to such as the Dresden Files where the character also struggles with difficulties in his life. I also pick books that make me laugh or are truly magical that help lift my spirits.
Tonya is a very talented young adult writer who has written two trilogies and currently working on her third series now. She weaves a magical tale that will leave you wanting more as you turn the pages, they are gripping and fun to read! These books have had a special place in my heart since I designed her book covers.
Gracyn Pierce is starting over. She has a new home, a new boyfriend, and a new horse. Everything is perfect, or so it seems. Because Gracyn left a secret behind. In her quest to erase the memory of that stormy night, she forces herself to study hard, her sights set on an Ivy League college. But her attempts to stay focused are derailed when the neighbor suspected of murdering his sister returns to town. As if that isn’t enough, her senses begin to change in ways that aren’t physically possible. As hard as she tries to find an explanation, there…
My fascination with the relationship between Rome and America grows out of the work I have done on early American culture, contemporary political thought, and ancient Rome. My most recent work, Rome and America: Communities of Strangers, Spectacles of Belonging, took shape through a lot of conversations over the years with friends and colleagues about the different tensions I saw in Roman politics and culture around questions of national identity, tensions that I saw being played out in the United States. I don’t like tidy histories. I am drawn to explorations of politics and culture that reveal the anxieties and dissonance that derive from our own attempt to resolve our incompleteness.
Winterer provides the classic discussion of the place of Rome (and then Greece) in early American education and intellectual life. The book is about how American classicists sought to shape a relationship to the classical past that persists to this day, creating a canon of ancient texts as a reaction against and refuge from modernity. The real payoff of this book for me lies in showing how the past is never just the past but a continuing aspect of our own identity-formation.
Debates continue to rage over whether American university students should be required to master a common core of knowledge. In The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910, Caroline Winterer traces the emergence of the classical model that became standard in the American curriculum in the nineteenth century and now lies at the core of contemporary controversies. By closely examining university curricula and the writings of classical scholars, Winterer demonstrates how classics was transformed from a narrow, language-based subject to a broader study of civilization, persuasively arguing that we cannot understand both the rise of…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I'm a mom of two daughters who is fascinated with reading nonfiction parenting books and listening to parenting-related podcasts. My absolute favorite, though, is when fiction authors take a dense parenting topic and turn it into a relatable and engaging story so that readers can explore the same important issues and challenges in a more enjoyable way.
This novel is a chilling depiction of the cut-throat world of elite college admissions for families attending an ultra-competitive private school. It’s another great example of taking concepts I’ve seen in nonfiction parenting books (helicopter parenting and over-pressuring kids) and playing them out in a fictional way. The details on the parents’ backstories, and how they affected their thought processes, allowed clear comparisons and contrasts to their situations, values, and beliefs and helped me see why I may want to handle certain situations differently.
"For those who couldn't stop reading about Lori Loughlin and Operation Varsity Blues, this suspenseful thriller about the lines moms are willing to cross to get their kids into college is for you."-Refinery29 "Book Club Winner."-Real Simple, Book Club Selection "A thriller for the post-college-admission-scandal age."-PopSugar Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Parade Magazine, Newsweek, POPSUGAR, Refinery29, Brit + Co, and more! Three women, three daughters, and a promise that they'll each get what they deserve... College admissions season at Seattle's Elliott Bay Academy is marked by glowing acceptances from top-tier institutions and students as impressive as their…
The year after I got tenure, I became a chairperson, overseeing more than twenty faculty members in my department at Ohio State University. I continued in administration for the next seventeen years, serving as a dean at Notre Dame for more then a decade. I am convinced that the best books on higher education interweave ideas, anecdotes, and data. I pursued that genre here, engaging the questions, what makes a university distinctive and how can one best flourish as an administrator.
When I became a dean in 1997, much of my serious reading moved from my discipline to higher education.
It made sense to me that the differences between chairperson, dean, provost, and president had more to do with demands on one’s time than the kind of work one needs to do, and indeed, I learned much from this book, which makes the case for strong and charismatic leadership.
While it is among the most compelling books on presidential leadership and its possible impact on a campus, much of the advice is transferable to persons in less senior positions.
Koch and Fisher have updated and expanded the latter's highly respected 1984 book, Power of the Presidency. In Presidential Leadership, the authors explore the transformational style of leadership in greater depth. This theory is based on a strong, charismatic university president who leads and transforms the university through the power of his or her own vision for the future. The provocative arguments offered throughout the book are based both on empirical studies and on the authors' personal experiences as university presidents. Chapters on total quality management, presidential spouses, and fund raising are new to this edition, as are 11 appendixes…
The year after I got tenure, I became a chairperson, overseeing more than twenty faculty members in my department at Ohio State University. I continued in administration for the next seventeen years, serving as a dean at Notre Dame for more then a decade. I am convinced that the best books on higher education interweave ideas, anecdotes, and data. I pursued that genre here, engaging the questions, what makes a university distinctive and how can one best flourish as an administrator.
When I became a dean, I bought a few books on being a dean, and for some time, even after my term ended, continued to follow the literature.
Most such advice is commonsensical, but one needs to be reminded of common sense. The Academic Deanship offers a thoughtful and often wise account of the broader responsibilities and daily work of deans. Chairpersons, who work closely with deans, might also benefit from its perspectives.
A deanship is now seen as more of a phase in an overall academic career than as a permanent shift from teaching to administration. In fact, the nature of the job itself has changed, as has the range of likely options at the end of a dean's tenure. This book serves as a guide for the aspiring or new dean, offering practical advice on how to approach the interview process and the new job, as well as providing a thoughtful assessment of the deanship in its wider context. The authors-both experienced academic deans at a variety of institutions-encourage the new…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
The year after I got tenure, I became a chairperson, overseeing more than twenty faculty members in my department at Ohio State University. I continued in administration for the next seventeen years, serving as a dean at Notre Dame for more then a decade. I am convinced that the best books on higher education interweave ideas, anecdotes, and data. I pursued that genre here, engaging the questions, what makes a university distinctive and how can one best flourish as an administrator.
When I received tenure in 1990, I bought this book for myself as a gift.
I thought that now that my university, at the time Ohio State, had agreed to invest in me, I should think more seriously about the idea of a university. I enjoyed it tremendously. It is lively, colorful, and witty. Written by the former dean of arts and sciences at Harvard, the book offers a wide-ranging overview of the American university.
Even if some of the statistics are dated, this book remains one of the most appealing introductions to, and overviews of, the American research university.
A view of America's colleges and universities and how they are run, the challenges they face and the issues that affect their "owners" - students, faculty, alumni, trustees and others. Among the issues covered are tenure, the admission process in elite institutions and curriculum.
