Game on: Why College Admission Is Rigged and How to Beat the System

Director of the Chapman journalism program--and mother of four recent college grads--Susan F. Paterno leads you through the admissions process to help you and your family make the best decision possible.

How is it possible that Harvard is more affordable for most American families than their local state university? Or that up to half of eligible students receive no financial aid? Or that public universities are rejecting homegrown middle- and working-class applicants and instead enrolling wealthy out-of- state students? College admission has escalated into a high-stakes game of emotional and financial survival. How is the deck stacked against you? And what can you do about it?

Susan F. Paterno, a veteran academic and journalist, answers these questions and more in Game On. Paterno helped her four very different kids navigate the application process to a wide range of colleges, paying for their four-year educations on a finite budget. She incisively decodes the college admission industry--the consultants, the tutors, the rankers, the branding companies hawking "advantage"--and arms you with the knowledge you need to make the system work for you.

You'll learn how to narrow your focus, analyze who gets in and why, and look for the right financial fit before considering anything else, including geography, reputation, and, especially, ranking.

Among the tools and insights in Game On:

- Why forty years of failed free-market policies have led to skyrocketing tuition and historic levels of student debt
- Why applying to college has become a bewildering maze and how to find your way to a successful result
- Why college costs are more terrifying than you think
- How to read beyond the rack rate to negotiate the best financial package with the least debt
- Why merit is a myth, but merit aid is essential
- The difference between family debt and student debt and how to split it

A playbook for the Hunger Games of higher education, Game On explains the anxiety, uncertainty, and chaos in college admission, explodes the myth of meritocracy, exposes the academy's connection to America's widening gap between rich and poor, and provides strategies to beat--and reform--a broken system.

Author: Susan F. Paterno
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 06/15/2021
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.12lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781250622648


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 04/26/2021
Library Journal 06/01/2021 pg. 126

About the Author
Susan F. Paterno is the director of the journalism program at Chapman University in Orange, California. An award-winning journalist with more than twenty years' experience, she has written for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and U.S. News & World Report. As senior writer for American Journalism Review, she won a landmark ruling to protect journalists in the state of California. She has collaborated on a half dozen books, including the Newswriter's Handbook and Talk Straight, Listen Carefully with M. L. Stein.