Daniel Golden, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, shares at least the latter of those expectations. In his new book, “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates,” Golden takes to task the people who run the nation’s elite institutions of higher education for departing from a standard of strict academic merit in making admissions decisions—and for substituting assorted less-noble criteria, such as family wealth, parental fame, old connections and, in the case of my institution, legacy status, or being the child of an alumnus or alumna.

My first response to Golden’s book—after a grimace—is to be grateful for his idealism. Without it, and without people like him who insist on believing in a meritocratic ideal, it would be all too easy for those of us involved in the pull-and-tug of educational decision-making to succumb to cynicism.

My second response is to say that the idealist’s approach is deceptively, unrealistically simple, to the point of being simplistic. Having worked in private college admissions for almost 40 years, I can safely say that decision-making is more art than science. No one has yet perfected the skill of human assessment. And especially at highly selective universities like Notre Dame, where we have many more applicants who are academically competitive than we can accommodate, we say “no” each year to thousands of students who could be successful here simply because we have no room.

The meritocratic ideal also suffers from the assumption that merit can be established definitively and “by the numbers”—high school grade-point average and SAT or ACT scores. Who is to say that those are the numbers that ought to count? All high school curricula are not the same and an “A” at one school is not necessarily the equivalent of an “A” at another. And the academic significance of standardized test scores is one of the longest-running arguments in higher education.

But the biggest flaw in the meritocratic ideal is its misconception of exactly what the admissions staff at an institution like ours is doing as it sifts applications and says “yes” to some and “no” to others.

Admissions officers do not “select” a freshman class so much as they try to “shape” one. Each year, from among many hundreds of qualified applicants, we try to bring to Notre Dame a group of students who will add something to our intellectual community. Scholars, athletes, students familiar with the rich tradition of this Catholic university, first-generation college students, ethnic-minority students and others all come together to learn with and from each other.

As my eldest daughter shared with me in her first e-mail home as a first-year Notre Dame student, “One’s opportunities to learn are only limited by your need for sleep.”

Using this approach, admissions staffs at selective institutions attempt each year to create a learning community that reflects in some degree the ethnic, socioeconomic, athletic and other mixture of our society and world.

Always, of course, there is one clear imperative: that every student we admit must be honestly capable of competing with all the rest. Whether at Notre Dame, Harvard, Duke or any other “elite” institution, it would not only be unethical but also cruel to grant admission solely because of family ties, wealth, race, athletic talent or any other such attribute to a student we knew could not compete academically.

We also attempt to satisfy a diverse mix of legitimate interests in our institutions. To take my own again as an example, the intense loyalty of our alumni is part of what makes Notre Dame the place it is and is, we feel, a legitimate factor to consider in the admissions process.

It also must be noted that the financial contributions of those alumni are, to a large degree, what has enabled us to adopt a need-blind admissions policy, admitting qualified students without regard to their ability to pay and committing to meet 100 percent of every admitted student’s demonstrated financial need.

That’s part of the irony in the subtitle of Golden’s book: “How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates.” To an extent he perhaps does not appreciate, part of the price of admission for the “ruling class” is to pay the way for many who otherwise would be left outside the gates.

TopicID: 19143

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed an executive order essentially establishing ‘’affirmative action’’ as we know it today. Since then, the highest court in our land has issued only one ruling on this order, in 1978, when it found in Regents of U.C. vs. Bakke that ’’quotas’’ could not be used in the admissions process. For the last 24 years, we have aggressively sought qualified, ethnically underrepresented students for our campuses.

A simple fact that cannot be emphasized sufficiently is that we have had affirmative action as long as we have had American colleges and universities. The first group to benefit from what was called ‘’special consideration’’ included children of politicians and benefactors. A generation later, alumni children were added to this group. Beginning in the early 1900s, athletic teams, fine arts departments and others with attractive talents for a university community have been the perpetual beneficiaries of ‘’special consideration.’’ So it is hard for me to understand why now there are those who want to outlaw ‘’special consideration’’ or ‘’affirmative action’’ for ethnically underrepresented students—individuals who have only enjoyed the positive attention of admissions offices since 1965.

Like most universities, the University of Notre Dame, is proud of its commitment to diversity, all forms of diversity, and steadfastly defends the shared commitment to seek aggressively students who are considered well-suited for our academic community. This year, with 12,000 applications for 1,960 spaces, our admissions decisions are not based upon a set of ‘’numbers,’’ nor are they based upon the question of ‘’whether Johnny can do the work here.’’ I dare say that 80 percent of our applicants could be successful academically at Notre Dame. Rather, our decisions are based upon a thorough review and careful consideration of each candidate’s file, including our specific needs as an academic community.

We subscribe strongly to the belief that we learn from each other and that our educational experiences are not limited to the classroom. During my elder daughter’s first year here at Notre Dame, her enthusiastic 2 a.m. e-mail stated succinctly, ‘’Your opportunities to learn are only limited by your need for sleep.’’

Do we want gifted scholars who might find a cure for cancer and ways to bring peace to the world? Do we want loyal alumni who will support our university financially in order to keep our tuition as low as possible and provide scholarship monies to those in need? Do we want competitive athletic teams? Do we want diversity in the broadest sense in our efforts to educate the Catholic leaders for tomorrow? The resounding answer is ‘’Yes!’’ to all these of goals and many others.

So, to those advocating the end of affirmative action and wanting college admissions to operate on a ‘’level playing field,’’ I ask you to envision what any campus would look like if we admit students solely by the ‘’numbers.’’ To discard initiatives to increase ethnic diversity on our campus, while at the same time protecting other ’’favored’’ groups, is morally wrong and contrary to what we aspire to provide our children. Notre Dame’s annual senior survey reflected the fact that, while our recent graduates have been very satisfied with their undergraduate experiences and would choose to attend Notre Dame again, they wished for greater ethnic diversity among their classmates. Until this response changes, we will not alter our commitment to affirming and contributing to diversity on this campus.

I know most of my colleagues at other institutions feel the same way. And we hope that young men and women opening those envelopes this spring will understand.

Daniel J. Saracino is assistant provost for enrollment at the University of Notre Dame and is a past president of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling.

March 29,2003

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