Admissions Horror Show

No more legacy preferences, test-score flouting, and résumé padding! Watch, if you dare, as the merely rich and only sort of powerful attempt to secure Ivy League admission spots without the old bag of tricks.

- By Nicole Laporte. Illustration by Joe Darrow

In February, when asked to describe how college admissions was going so far this year, one affluent white parent in Los Angeles sent me a text with three emoji faces: one was sad, one was blue-faced and shivering, and one looked ready to barf.

Speaking later over the phone, this person chose the word bleak to describe how the early action/decision results that were announced in December (regular admission results came out in late March and early April) had gone over at the exclusive independent school, where their child-a top student and leader with reams of extracurriculars-had been deferred from an Ivy League school despite a legacy connection. Classmates who'd also applied for early decision to the school were flat-out rejected.

A dumpster fire is what Jen Kaifesh, the founder of Great Expectations College Prep, whose clients hail from tony Los Angeles neighborhoods like Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, and Brentwood, called early admissions results. Certain private schools that used to have incredible admissions results have just been obliterated. And parents are furious Kaifesh said she retains hope for the regular admissions pool in the spring, but that early decision has aways been the way in for wealthy families, because you can commit. You don't have to worry about financial aid. You probably had the funds to go visit and make sure it's your dream school. For that to be a bloodbath is not a good sign?