Book Review: Creating a Class - Mitchell L. Stevens
In recent years, colleges and universities have pushed for greater diversity among students, faculty, and staff. In spite of the rampant national dialogue, demographics remain mostly homogenous from year to year, especially at selective institutions. Sociologist Mitchell L. Stevens spent 18 months (2000-2001) as a participant-observer at a prestigious, selective, liberal arts university in the Northeast. Throughout the study, Stevens simultaneously gathered data while living the life of an admissions officer. In Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of the Elites, Stevens invites readers into this admissions office through personal reflection, interviews, and discussion of relevant American history. Readers join Stevens’ journey of exploring how American, liberal arts higher education institutions reproduce social class.
Stevens opens the book by describing the site of his research: a selective institution (“the College”) in the Northeast. The College is more rural than some of its competitors and a tier below the prestige of the nearby Ivy League institutions. Through the first chapter, readers get to know the campus and key players in the admissions office. In Chapter 2, Stevens presents the numbers that drive college admissions. He highlights the arms race amongst colleges at the top of the US News & World Report annual college rankings. The rankings indicate prestige and help colleges draw in applicants from across the country rather than relying on regional recruitment often employed by less selective institutions. To maintain high rankings, colleges will tweak numbers to use the best number possible while still remaining accurate (e.g., rounding up, reporting on the incoming class instead of the entire student body). This portrayal game is common across higher education institutions, and colleges must participate if they want to be taken seriously.
The next three chapters highlight various recruitment practices employed by the College. In Chapter 3, readers accompany Stevens on high school visits. These visits are both local and cross-country, as well as tours that bring guidance counselors to the College. Stevens discusses the different types of schools visited and why along with the importance of maintaining good relationships with guidance counselors. Admissions officers invest more energy in private or college preparatory high school visits because these relationships are more likely to yield ideal applicants for the College. Chapter 4 explores the influential role of college athletics on admissions. Coaches spend much of the year recruiting students who are both excellent athletes and good students who fit the academic criteria for admission. For hundreds of leads, coaches often see less than 10 students enroll each year. In addition to athletic recruitment, college sports attract applicants and facilitate alumni loyalty to institutions. Coaches and admissions officers are expected to work together, but the relationship can be tense given the competing interests of each party. In Chapter 5, Stevens shared how the College addressed multicultural recruitment and racial diversity. The challenge for the College is related to the systemic injustice in American education. Students of color are largely unqualified for the College based on admissions standards; those who have excellent applications are also sought by more prestigious institutions. Students are likely to enroll at the most prestigious institution to which they were accepted, which often is not the College. Since international students do not count in the tally of racial diversity, the College must get creative in wooing and advocating for these students’ applications.
The final three chapters address admissions decisions, student yield, and the legacy of selective higher education. In Chapter 6, readers join the admissions officers as they review applications. In the coarse sorting process, applications are assigned a score from 0–9. An 8 or 9 is admitted, a 0–3 is rejected, and all others are brought to the admissions committee for deliberation. Readers are invited into admissions committee meetings for the fine sorting phase in which officers advocate for certain students and collectively process the tough decisions. Following this, applications are then evaluated for financial aid, which further influences the admissions decisions; the financial aid budget is limited, and student need must be considered. In Chapter 7, Stevens walks readers through yield season, which lasts for a few weeks in the spring semester. In this time, applicants are invited to campus again for open houses and admissions officers work hard to cultivate relationships with the most desirable families, wooing them to choose the College over all other options. Finally, Stevens closes the book by revisiting the influence of aristocracy in American higher education—especially selective institutions. He proposes that this system helps parents feel safe knowing their children are offered a prestigious degree, like-minded peers, and an abundance of desirable opportunities. Selective institutions have high retention and graduation rates, which is advantageous for the students who enroll.
Creating a Class is an engaging narrative that places readers in the thick of higher education admissions. Stevens exemplifies the adage of showing rather than telling through his writing. Instead of simply telling readers about the admissions cycle as an author might do in a research paper, Stevens provides extraordinary detail that catches and holds the interest of the reader. We become intimately acquainted with the key players, the College, and the admissions outcomes. Throughout the narrative, Stevens weaves in the history of American higher education. He explores how certain federal policies, world events, technological innovations, and social events have contributed to the present practices within college admissions. This analysis helps readers follow Stevens’ argument for why each chapter is important to the equation of college choice and social status. For example, in Chapter 3, Stevens states clearly, “I argue that athletics programs are an important prestige system for all of American higher education” (p. 98). The remainder of the chapter addresses this point from several angles, including recruitment of individuals, league affiliation, and cultivation of a shared loyalty among students. As much as he highlights the cultivation of an ideal class, Stevens also reveals the systemic exclusion of subgroups of students, often beyond the control of any single player.
Stevens is clear that this book specifically addresses selective college admissions practices rather than having a universal application. Throughout the text, he reminds readers that admissions officers work with applications, not applicants. Stevens identifies two reasons for this: officers remove the human piece to make the difficult decisions easier, and the College receives too many applications to consider every file as a unique, individual story. This system makes sense but seems to contradict the feel of the book, which highlights dozens of individual interactions. The book pulls at the emotions of readers, even though Stevens highlights the attempted objectivity of the admissions process. There seems to be a slight disconnect in what is said and how the book is written. Furthermore, the chapters on decisions and yield are dated. The two decades since Stevens conducted his research have continued to change the admissions game. First, applications are now electronic. Instead of admissions officers looking at individual files for applicants, computer systems can automate the coarse sorting process, thereby further removing human interaction with applications. Second, common applications make it easier for students to apply to several colleges, which would create an even larger application to officer ratio than the 400:1 ratio Stevens described. This also forces a change in admissions office practices. These factors are important to the story of selective college admissions yet are missing from this book.
Creating a Class was also lacking in a few other key areas. Stevens hints at the importance of finances in admissions decisions but never really gets at the history of college funding, tuition discounting, increasing cost of attendance, or how cost is correlated with prestige. Readers who have not previously studied higher education finances might miss the importance of money to admissions decisions, especially at a school like the College that competes with Ivy League institutions without as much financial security in the endowment. Additionally, Stevens’ discussions of historical or social contexts for modern practices is occasionally lackluster. He spends the bulk of each chapter sharing conversations and lived experiences throughout his 18 months of research and then only a few pages discussing implications. For example, in the chapter on sports, Stevens proposes that the American obsession with body image could play into the universal love of college sports—even for non-student athletes—but does not elaborate on this fascinating point.
Overall, Creating a Class is an engaging introduction to the world of college admissions. This book is a helpful read for anyone interested in learning what goes into the college application and decision-making process. Parents of high schoolers might gain empathy for admissions officers or uncover tips for strengthening their child’s application. College faculty might also learn more about the pressures faced by admissions officers—again building empathy—which Stevens described as lacking at the College. Additionally, anyone interested in diversity matters would find insights about various educational systemic processes that maintain aristocracy and social class. Creating a Class is a fascinating exposé of selective college admissions and paves the way for future publications on the inner workings of higher education systems.
