We Got In (For Less)

Getting into college is not exactly an easy endeavor—and not just because the applicant pool grows larger every year. The admissions process is especially difficult since the meritocratic process most admissions offices advertise turns out to be flawed. Even with policies such as affirmative action and “need-blind” financial aid in place, incoming freshmen classes still often contain disproportionate percentages of legacy students, “development admits,” and, as the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Daniel L. Golden ’78 has argued, scions of the American ruling class. Although numerous factors contribute to such disparity, one of its causes seems to be the existence of costly insider information that gives certain students—i.e., the ones willing and able to pay thousands of dollars for private college counseling, test prep services, and other expensive tips—definite advantages over others.

Any measure to increase access to that body of information should be welcomed, including the recently developed and somewhat controversial website WeGotIn.net, which allows students access to successful Ivy League applications for a nominal fee. Of course, students should exercise their judgment when studying these applications; after all, acceptance letters are issued to individuals, not to templates, and the applications for sale are available merely because certain freshmen last year were paid to submit them, not because of any superior quality. But, at its core, this new service is a positive addition to the college admissions marketplace, if only because it does what it can to level the proverbial playing field in a small but significant way.

On WeGotIn.net—the public interface of Howard Yaruss’s Application Project, Inc.—students can purchase access to a set of Brown or Columbia University applications for $19.99 each or $34.99 for both. Yaruss told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the point of his service is, essentially, to increase transparency at an extremely reasonable price. “Students spend thousands of dollars preparing for the SAT,” he said. “We’re offering this for the cost of a trade paperback.”

Although the project’s price and larger mission are certainly commendable, the product could still benefit from certain improvements. For one, the site should strive to include analysis or commentary alongside each application: By supplying the strengths and weaknesses of each submission, students will be less likely to merely mimic the contents they see. Secondly, going forward the service should ensure that a variety of different application types are represented in each set purchased, as students should not be led to think that there is only one way to write the application that will admit them to the college of their dreams.

Naturally, WeGotIn.net has encountered considerable criticism, mostly related to concerns over an increased potential for plagiarism and whether the new service in turn provides an unfair advantage to a privileged few. In terms of plagiarism, students already consult an enormous amount of online sources, sample essays, and other Internet aids when they write their applications, and this new service will hardly be a game-changer in that sense. Besides, admissions offices should do their part to ensure that no plagiarized applications are successful. And claims about unfair advantages the sight might offer ignore the simple fact that admissions offices are unlikely to admit candidates who merely emulate the form of a successful application rather than expressing themselves in their own terms. Truth be told, most criticism of WeGotIn.com should be taken with a grain of salt, as a large portion of the site’s naysayers seem to be in the business of college admissions and counseling themselves.

This new service, and others that may follow, may not be perfect, but they are nevertheless positive innovations that strive to equalize the admissions game—a game in which fairness has unfortunately come to seem passé.