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The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us

Paul Tough (Goodreads Author)

4.42 · Rating details · 1,418 ratings · 237 reviews

“Indelible and extraordinary.”—Tara Westover, author of Educated: A Memoir, New York Times Book Review
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

The best-selling author of How Children Succeed returns with a powerful, mind-changing inquiry into higher education in the United States

Does college still work? Is the system designed just to protect the privileged and leave ...more

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Hardcover, 400 pages

Published September 10th 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Lists with This Book

The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power

NYT Editors’ Choice 201910

51 books — 26 voters

The Tyranny of the Meritocracy by Lani Guinier

The Diversity Delusion by Heather Mac Donald

Controversies in Higher Education

148 books — 35 voters

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Oct 14, 2019 Suzanne rated it it was amazing

First up, this isn’t a guide on how to get into college. Nor is it reassurance that it doesn’t matter which college you get into. Instead, it’s an examination of the college playing field, and not only will you better understand just how tilted it is but also how, even when where attempts are made to make it more level, the inequalities can persist. At the same time, Tough highlights signals of hope and bright spots where dedicated people are invested in helping more students succeed in and bene First up, this isn’t a guide on how to get into college. Nor is it reassurance that it doesn’t matter which college you get into. Instead, it’s an examination of the college playing field, and not only will you better understand just how tilted it is but also how, even when where attempts are made to make it more level, the inequalities can persist. At the same time, Tough highlights signals of hope and bright spots where dedicated people are invested in helping more students succeed in and benefit from the college system. This is an insightful and thought-provoking read.

If you are a parent of a high schooler, reading the section, Letting In, on how colleges approach admissions is simultaneously insightful and scary. You’ll learn that, thanks to enrollment managers who can crunch data to predict financial impact decisions, “if you pick any two freshman at the same college, they are likely to be paying completely different tuition rates. Those rates are not based on the true value of the service the college is offering or even on the ability of the student’s family to pay; instead they are based on a complex calculation of what the student is worth to the college and what the college is worth to the student.”

Tough also gave me a whole new appreciation and respect for the colleges that are going “test optional” (ie. no longer taking SAT or ACT scores into account). He lays out the research that shows how relying too heavily on these test scores mean some high-potential students can miss out on a college spot. Thanks to Tough, I had a much more informed reaction to the announcement that students will be able to retake specific subjects in the ACT, rather than the whole test, starting in September 2020.

I also am so grateful to people like Professor David Laude and Professor Uri Treisman (both at the University of Texas) for being curious about why some students were not succeeding, investing time and effort into understanding why, and then experimenting with ways to improve their outcomes. Laude identified fourteen data points to predict a student’s likelihood of of graduating and, in retrospect, it won’t surprise you that they include things like family income, SAT scores, and parents' educational background. These are kids who arrive at college without the benefits of having advice from parents who understand how college works, the cushion of money, and previous access to a wide range of APs at high school. Once they are at college, they can feel socially isolated and are often worried about money. Add on starting to struggle with classes (because they are tackling material for the first time that their fellow students may have already studied at high school) and it’s no wonder that they can mistakenly believe they don’t fit in. How do we ensure they don’t flounder in this new, unfamiliar world that’s demanding in a way they’ve never experienced compared to many of the more affluent, advantaged students? Laude and Triesman show the way.

Finally, Tough ends with a look at the inspiring audacity and impact of the G.I. Bill in changing the economic and social mobility of hundreds of thousands of families across America for the better. He contrasts it today with how there is now an ideological division around college. One perspective is summed up by Rick Santorum when he was running for president in 2012, and said that trying to have more people get a college degree makes you a “snob.” (Tough points out that Santorum “bravely endured the snobbery of the American college campus just long enough to collect a BA, and then an MBA, and then a law degree.”) Unfortunately, arguments using data never win over arguments using emotion. So Tough challenges us all to think about how we can help more people understand that “our collective public education benefits us all.”

Great book to read and discuss with your book club. ...more

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Sep 10, 2020 Sleepless Dreamer rated it really liked it

There were about two weeks where I seriously considered studying in the United States. However, after filling up one page of the nightmare that is the Common App, I asked myself if I would actually go study at any American college if I got accepted. I realized that my answer was, "mm, probably not, I just wanna know if I can get in". That's not a good enough reason and so I stopped. Reading this made me realize how incredibly happy I am with my decision.

The Years That Matter Most: How College M ...more

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Oct 16, 2019 Ryan rated it really liked it

In The Years That Matter Most, Paul Tough asks whether Americans should go to university.

Does meritorious social mobility exist in America or has it been corrupted by inherited wealth? Under the old social mobility model, which still gets props, Americans who outworked others reached the top and consequently deserved their fabulous wealth and lofty status. The postwar generations blazed a new myth of meritorious prosperity: in the university, the diligent, intelligent, and credentialed would ris In The Years That Matter Most, Paul Tough asks whether Americans should go to university.

Does meritorious social mobility exist in America or has it been corrupted by inherited wealth? Under the old social mobility model, which still gets props, Americans who outworked others reached the top and consequently deserved their fabulous wealth and lofty status. The postwar generations blazed a new myth of meritorious prosperity: in the university, the diligent, intelligent, and credentialed would rise. Today, the popularity and power of that myth is undeniable, so students across the USA work very hard to ace tests to gain entry to institutions that take them straight to the top. But you have to pay to play—pay for tutors, for tours, for connections (e.g. legacy). A silver spoon helps, and in the aggregate it ultimately grants wealth and status. Does it grant merit?

The conventional wisdom I’ve often heard is that students should find a good fit to thrive in; Tough suggests that might have been true in 1962 but now students do seem to make the best choice if they go to the most selective college. American students who can land a spot in an Ivy League university stand a very good chance of becoming a 1 percenter (here defined as an annual income of ~US$650K) relative to graduates from even slightly less prestigious universities. (Is this statistic inflated by Wall Street jobs? Tough doesn't explore the possibility.) So elite schools prioritize test scores, and affluent students choose the most selective university they can enter based on those scores. Because elite universities spend more per pupil than other universities do—sometimes over a hundred thousand dollars per year more—exorbitant American tuition at the top may still be a bargain, even if the "value added" is tricky to calculate everywhere else.

Clearly, tests like the SAT and ACT are influential, but they strongly reward the wealthy. Can we make them more equitable? It doesn’t seem so. The College Board and Khan Academy partnered and released glowing press releases (which were turned into glowing headlines) but the data focused on carefully chosen categories that obscured the broader truth: online SAT training mostly doesn’t do anything. The rich retain their advantage, even if the lottery students (poor but brilliant) who are accepted into these elite institutions consistently wonder (when interviewed by Tough, at least) why they deserve to rise. Interestingly, some less than elite universities stopped admitting based on the tests since high school GPA is a better predictor of university success than the SAT (the SAT and GPA are slightly more reliable, but if you have a GPA and income, maybe you're set). Now, universities are building data banks of SAT scores, ACT scores, and family incomes in order to determine who they should admit. I couldn't escape the thought that universities are not so well designed to establish merit and hierarchy, but they've become obsessed with both tasks.

As Tough moves to his conclusion, the focus shifts from merit to whether post-secondary education is worth the hype. Has college become underrated? He writes:

you could hear the same arguments, day after day, on Fox & Friends or Tucker Carlson Tonight: four-year colleges were offering America's youth nothing but safe spaces, emotional-support dogs, and towering mounds of student debt; meanwhile, high-paying welding jobs were sitting vacant because millennial snowflakes were afraid to get their hands dirty. One of the many odd things about the rhetoric that posits welding as the antithesis of college is that in order to become a welder, you actually have to go to college.

He also learns that welders in the USA tend to earn less than graduates from liberal arts colleges (yes, even philosophy majors). Further, he notes the irony of so many critics of education speaking from behind their elite degrees (I wonder if these politicians denigrate university because they bought their way in). Ultimately, it's hard not to feel for the people he interviews who don't go to university and then do everything they can to get credentialed so they can get ahead.

Is university worth it? For me, it was, and though I've rarely thought of my degree as a monetary return on investment I'm sure I'm better off. Tough's analysis focuses on whether getting an education pays off and ultimately calls for more people to attend university because "our collective public education befits us all."

*

Some random notes. Because Tough mostly avoids considering whether getting an education can help develop an authentic or deeper sense of "self" or citizenship, Educated, by Westover, might be a productive companion read. It’s not surprising that Amy Chua, author of Tiger Mother, works at Yale--her advice sounds like that of an insider who knows some shortcuts and doesn't want to rock the boat. Tough often references a book, Pedigree, that argues that being a lacrosse bro is more advantageous than a pleb like me could imagine because lacrosse is a high cost of access sport that rewards hard work, a way of separating the gritty among the elite. The book I read previous to this one, Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers, was timely. Tough's style, argumentation, and research all put Gladwell to shame. Having said that, Gladwell's thesis, that people often want to believe that others are as truthful as they are and therefore accept those people's lies, does seem like a useful starting point for exploring merit, status, wealth and elite post-secondary education in the USA. And of course, let's not forget The Great Gatsby, whose conclusion could have been written here: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." ...more

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Sep 22, 2019 Marks54 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Paul Tough’s new book is an addition to the literature of how the elite college applications process in the US, while always tied to replicating status and class, has recently grown even more so to the point where it is grossly unfair to most potential applicants, who lack the family resources, educational histories, and contacts to successfully apply to top college and to benefit and prosper at those colleges if they manage to secure admission. The application process writ large is shown as an Paul Tough’s new book is an addition to the literature of how the elite college applications process in the US, while always tied to replicating status and class, has recently grown even more so to the point where it is grossly unfair to most potential applicants, who lack the family resources, educational histories, and contacts to successfully apply to top college and to benefit and prosper at those colleges if they manage to secure admission. The application process writ large is shown as an anxiety provoking and highly stressful process for most, even while it is the elite colleges who manage the process to achieve their own objectives and secure the maximum resources from students and donors in the process. Efforts to improve on the success of poorer less advantaged students are discussed, along with recent economic analyses that shed light on the economics of higher education trends. The author builds his book on a combination of wide ranging interviews with a spectrum of participants in the admissions game, along with thoughtful looks at some of the data analyses that are accumulating about elite higher education. The overall direction of the book is that many more deserving students could benefit from access to elite schools, that the country would be better for their doing so, and that the putative shortcomings of underprivileged applicants are either overstated or else capable of being addressed to some degree through investments by schools in better teaching of freshmen in critical courses. Especially interesting in this regard are some long chapters on developments at the University of Texas. The net conclusion of the book, however, is not overly optimistic, in that elite colleges have shown little interest in expanding their capacity to admit significantly larger numbers of poorer or minority students. He closes the book by reflecting on the GI Bill after WW2 and noting the differences with the Obama administration’s effort at improving graduation rates. He laments our individual orientation to higher education attainment when our history shows it can bring significant societal benefits.

I am torn on what to think about this. I do not disagree with much of what he argues, but must note that it is well known and understood. Elite systems function to preserve and replicate themselves and that certainly includes the US higher education system. Tough’s good intentions suggest that he would do better to focus his attention on the role of large public institutions, like the Big 10 schools, since they educate far more students than the Ivy and near Ivy schools. Increasing access to these schools, coupled with the junior colleges would be more effective than focusing on the ultra elites. I guess it would make for a less compelling crisis, however. The sections on UT Austin fit in this direction, but the Austin case is a bit particular. His emphasis on teaching freshman calculus and the more general need to actually educate new and needy students is spot on but conceptually distinct from getting into Harvard, Yales, Princeton, or Penn. He seems to have a running argument with the College Board that it is not really interested in improving access. I am sympathetic but it strikes me as less consequential to his overall story.

Net net - I am familiar with all of this. I am unsure what the book is adding to the discussion, even though it is fun to read. (I saw the author talk recently and he gives a good show too.) ...more

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Sep 28, 2019 Mehrsa rated it it was amazing

Of all the college and meritocracy books, this is the best and the most interesting. Tough cuts through the data and the hype and offers a timely analysis of inequality and meritocracy as it relates to the college admissions process. In sum, it is not really a meritocracy. The SAT correlates with family income. Elite colleges take mostly rich kids. And it actually does matter which college you go to. He also debunks the dumb trope about how people should skip college to become welders making $10 ...more

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Jan 31, 2020 Chuck rated it it was amazing

I'm not exactly sure where to start with this book. I suppose the best thing I can say about it is this: in ten years when I look back on the second stage of my career, I imagine I will look back at this book as the light that illuminated my path. In other words, I found Tough's book to be moving, profound, and inspiring. I felt a rollercoaster of emotions while reading this: anger, sadness and elation resulting in literal tears, a burning desire to create change crushed ten pages later by disil I'm not exactly sure where to start with this book. I suppose the best thing I can say about it is this: in ten years when I look back on the second stage of my career, I imagine I will look back at this book as the light that illuminated my path. In other words, I found Tough's book to be moving, profound, and inspiring. I felt a rollercoaster of emotions while reading this: anger, sadness and elation resulting in literal tears, a burning desire to create change crushed ten pages later by disillusionment in a rigged and self-perpetuating system of exclusion--just to name a few. While much of the focus is on elite institutions (many of which can spend six figures a year on students that already have affluence and advantage because of billion dollar endowments), I still feel it was an important read as a community college professor and department head. Many of our students are the underrepresented, underprepared, lower income, first generation and minority students that it seems many of the selective institutions have created false marketing claims about serving while truly protecting elitist interests. After reading, in my view, the absurdly corrupt practices of the College Board, I'm even more a fan of our multiple measure practices for placement in curriculum courses. It's a shame my alma mater (Clemson University) even comes across uncaring, but it's no real surprise. On the positive side, I have new heroes in Uri Treisman and David Laude. There are dozens of ideas in my head now about what I want to do for our students. It's exciting albeit a bit scary, but there's a passage written about Laude that will serve as my new grounding theme and rally-cry:

In the past, he'd always put the responsibility for students' failure in his class on someone else:
on the students' subpar high schools or their disengaged families or on the students themselves.
Now he decided the responsibility really lay with him. It his students failed, it was because he
was letting them fail" (Tough 213).

And so it is.
...more

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Oct 04, 2019 Steve Peifer rated it it was amazing

I have worked in this field for 20 years and not only does Tough get it, he sees far beyond most of us who can’t see beyond our trenches. He is a evocative writer who will make you desperately care about where a girl from the Bronx gets into college. He does an overview of educational policy that has led us to this perilous place that made so many things clear that weren’t before I read this book.

A mark of a great book is knowing the right people to talk to. By highlighting the work of Angel and ...more

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Feb 11, 2020 Carl rated it it was amazing

Shelves: education

College is supposed to be the path to social mobility in the United States, but that doesn't seem to be true any more. There are exceptions, but on average rich students go to elite schools and stay rich, middle class students go to non-elite schools and stay middle class, and poor students don't go to college or drop out with debt. Tough asks why this is happening, looking at everything from standardized testing and test prep to lack of funding to college rankings that reward enrolling rich stu ...more

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Oct 05, 2019 Carolyn Kost rated it liked it

Shelves: education

This book is really more a collection of essays, some more effective than others. It would have benefited from a closer editing of the anecdotes and straw man arguments. Tough's previous work, How Children Succeed was enjoyable, though I recall it as being similarly Gladwellian in its fallacious reasoning and lack of logic.

I'm delighted Tough discussed the bottom line with university enrollment management (published in the NYT in 9/19), mentioned Tressie McMillan Cottom's book, Lower Ed (about This book is really more a collection of essays, some more effective than others. It would have benefited from a closer editing of the anecdotes and straw man arguments. Tough's previous work, How Children Succeed was enjoyable, though I recall it as being similarly Gladwellian in its fallacious reasoning and lack of logic.

I'm delighted Tough discussed the bottom line with university enrollment management (published in the NYT in 9/19), mentioned Tressie McMillan Cottom's book, Lower Ed (about the ways for-profit institutions and their analogs use the Gospel of Education --get a degree at any cost to have greater security-- only to saddle students with useless credentials and mountains of debt), Lauren Rivera's book, Pedigree (which demonstrates the ways elite professional services use subtle indicators to ensure they hire the most privileged from the most highly selective institutions), Khan Academy's usage data (guess who uses it most?), and College Board CEO Coleman's salary ($1.5M--for a non-profit?!) despite his successive failures but superb attention to PR.

Tough dropped the ball on the analysis regarding why people [like me] make "the irrational choice" to attend other than most highly selective schools that admit us. How about values? At the time, I wanted a university that shared my spiritual values (I was a Religious Studies and Spanish major), not a secular one that promised to transform me into an elitist, and did not want to be among the old moneyed class who would regard me as a lesser life form. I knew my worldly station and my mind and soul were elsewhere. I suppose I cannot expect Tough to comprehend that.

Tough also seems to believe everyone should get a college degree, even though he didn't. Everyone who thinks that should work like I did at a community college or a for-profit for a few months with the many students who struggle to read or perform basic arithmetic, experience psychic and physical pain at having to craft a few sentences and lack general wherewithal and the motivation to attend class or study groups or earn worthless degrees with mountains of debt.

He totally lost me with the discussion of Ivonne Martinez, the motivated and talented but economically marginalized Mexican American in Ch 10. Most universities don't possess the resources University of Texas-Austin engaged for Ivonne in Calculus: a renowned math pedagogue in Uri Treisman [whose work on ethnicity and study groups I cited in my book Engage!] and supremely talented Teaching Assistant [and native English speaker--another rarity!] in Erica Winterer who shepherded Ivonne away from the high level study group with other native Spanish speakers, implemented 2x week study groups without direct teaching but guiding pairs and groups through problem sets and then assembled an all female group--THEN evaded UT bureaucracy by granting an A to anyone earning an A on the final exam, erasing all previous F grades. Sounds like a Hollywood setup more than it does any of the universities I've worked for.

It may well be true that many more students could succeed were they assigned a personal tutor sitting at their elbow several hours a week. Is that what we're advocating for now? What happens later in the workforce? Will corporations, law firms, medical practices, the public sector be personal mentor these individuals in their careers? Egads. We need to recognize that everyone is not cut out for university. There are many ways of crafting a meaningful life with a sustainable wage that do not require a degree. For many people, it's just not worth it. The report from Third Way indicates that over 72% associates degree granting institutions and 17% bachelor's degree institutions "left the majority of their students earning less than $28,000—the typical salary of a high school graduate" and remember the average student loan debt is $32,731, to compound daily.

This collection of essays does not tell a cohesive story, except for the thread carried throughout exhorting educators and society at large to compensate for the stress, anxiety, and alienation that the less privileged have and do all we can to help them succeed. Individual characteristics and motivation are a result of systemic oppression and privilege, so they must be offset. We are meant to lower the standards and provide so many supports that all may reach them.

This is another installment in the Left's efforts to ensure equality of OUTCOMES, rather than merely equality of opportunity. It is this outlook that caused San Francisco to eliminate Algebra for everyone in 8th grade, since not everyone could do it so no one should access it. In this framework, it is insufficient that students can attend community colleges; all students must be able access to institutions regarded as elite. Better still, anything elite should be eliminated. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain made low. A socialist future approaches. ...more

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Sep 02, 2019 Haley Hope Gillilan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, arcs

absolutely outstanding. breaks down some important information about our higher education system and features some truly incredible anecdotes. I teared up towards the end. My higher ed friends MUST read this book, especially because a lot of it is taking a look our class- many of the interviewees in this book were in college from 2013-2017. It is relevant information for those of us taking on various roles in higher education.

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Jan 22, 2021 Lucy rated it it was amazing

Highly highly recommend to those starting to doubt the benevolence of the almighty universities, as tools of social mobility and symbols of meritocracy. Truly opened my eyes and gave me the language to describe why college board is bad for students and how we should be demanding our colleges and universities and government to do better for its students and for the future of our people.

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Feb 09, 2020 Sherri rated it it was amazing

Shelves: adult-nonfiction, audio, education

Wow. This was moving and thought-provoking and so well written. I teared up more than once as I heard about some of the first generation or lower income students who succeeded when supported by caring professors. (Three cheers for University of Texas). I highly recommend the audio read by Tough himself.

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Sep 23, 2019 Rick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Saw this book on Bill Gates' list of books he was interested in reading. I have one son in college, another in his senior year of high school, and a freshman in high school. As a college senior many years ago, I worked in the admissions office of my college, and thought I had a pretty good idea of how the admissions process worked.

Not only do I have a better understanding of the mechanics of college admissions, I have a much greater appreciation for the inequity inherent in higher education. We ...more

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Nov 06, 2019 Margaret rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2019, professional-learning

It is hard to summarize how much I admire this book. It has the sickest burns of the College Board and a quote from David Coleman that has now enraged me for weeks, the writing is superb and uses detail in just the right ways so I really felt like I got to know people, and I CRIED ACTUAL TEARS when a student passed her calc exam and her very amazing and dedicated professor called her on the phone to congratulate her. I'm not sure what the book is like if you don't work in higher ed or know much ...more

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Oct 27, 2019 Jen rated it it was amazing

This is a great read. Albeit I am already interested in the price and importance of college, I found the data concerning Ivy League vs state schools, ACT/SAT test prep, first generation and minority student achievement, and admissions procedures utterly fascinating. There is so much to think and talk about that I’d consider this nonfiction book a perfect book club read. The admissions strategy alone makes this one of my favorites of the year.

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Jan 30, 2020 Eowyn rated it it was amazing

Really interesting, well-written book about inequality and how our educational institutions perpetuate it, along with some ways that people are succeeding in making things better. Many engaging stories about students, faculty and other educators. Highly recommend (even if you don't have a kid heading to college soon!). ...more

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May 02, 2020 Julie rated it really liked it

I thought because I was in education, I understood it. I did not. I love the student stories in this book. I love how Mr. Tough writes these interactions. He does so in a way that the reader feels like she is sitting in on the interviews, too. I understand so many more things about teaching now, about my students, about my own college experiences, about the PURPOSE of a college education. This book is perfect for those who have a college degree and those who don’t. Both groups of people will tak ...more

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Feb 17, 2020 Marjorie Ingall rated it it was amazing

Shelves: grownups

The best non-fiction book I've read in a long time. A must-read, and not only for privileged parents going through the admissions process (but especially for privileged parents going through the admissions process). This is for everyone who cares about fairness and access and structural inequities and who enjoys hating the living shit out of the College Board which is evil and you should TOTALLY hate the living shit out of the College Board.

It is also a really good read. Not too dense with stat ...more

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Feb 12, 2020 ria rated it it was amazing

i highly recommend this to anyone interested in societal systems and influence, and especially anyone that advocates for education. this is not a book about how to get into university, but the most well-researched analysis of the american dream i've ever read - which is to say, very very interesting! ...more

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Jan 14, 2020 Kate Penner rated it it was amazing

A really galvanizing, well written work on the landscape of higher ed and its inaccessibility for millions of Americans.
It’s a particularly great survey work if you are interested in a brief history and the current state of college access, public higher ed, the student loan crisis, STEM persistence, issues with the AP curriculum and higher education as a stepping stone to social mobility. The case studies and personal narratives make this book sing!
I normally don’t write reviews, so this is ju ...more

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Oct 05, 2019 Arash Narchi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, education, college

It's really easy to answer the question of the value of college from a single lens today, whether you are directly using your education or not, the kind of profession you are in, the environment around you and your culture.

What Paul Tough did here that I found very interesting was looking at college from all the different angles and views. From the college admissions process, to standardized tests, to the rich who apply to college, the poor and the data on studies in between (including some coo ...more

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Nov 13, 2019 Abner rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

A powerful argument for changing not only how students get into college and who goes to college but also what happens once they are there. With the demise of small regional liberal arts colleges, do the elites like Princeton and Dartmouth and others have a public purpose that they're just not undertaking? ...more

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Dec 13, 2019 Jill rated it really liked it

A great report on the state of higher education. As someone who works in higher ed, as an advisor and who has worked in admissions, this book is spot on. I found it insightful, well-researched and well-written. A must for those who work in higher ed, for those who are looking to send their kids to college and anyone who has wondered was has happened in that world in the last 20 years.

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Sep 29, 2019 Katie Bruell rated it it was amazing

This was a fascinating, infuriating, and heartening read. We need to change the way we are currently doing college, starting with those stupid US News rankings and moving on to finding a way to fund it for everyone who wants and needs it.

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Oct 14, 2019 Lili rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

Absolutely brilliant. Loved the writing and undoubtedly chuckled at some sassy tones in the dissemination of the research done into higher education.

Need to do another skim through to outline my favorite quotes since I read a library copy.

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Dec 11, 2019 Rebecca added it

This book is highly depressing; I hope that it leads to some deep changes in higher education because the system we have now is a mess. In the meantime I will hope to forget as much as I can before my children are applying. But I loved the individual stories he tells here.

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Oct 31, 2019 Jenni Buchanan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, borrowed

A tough look at the inequality that exists in our current college admitting system.

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Nov 08, 2019 Krista O'Connell rated it it was amazing

The best book I have ever read about higher education, social mobility, and equity. Should be required reading for anyone interested in any of these topics.

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Jan 03, 2020 Sierra Elmore added it

Shelves: my-top-100-favorite-books, best-of-2019

Excellent, timely book with standout reporting and insights. As a college student, this got to me.

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Dec 15, 2019 Adnan Alaa rated it liked it

This is a very personal review. I strongly related to many of the stories and the facts presented in this book because I have gone through or witnessed the same happening for people close to me. This book starts by telling the story of a girl who dreams of getting admitted to an Ivy league university yet gets rejected. For me, this is a book about failed dreams. These dreams you spend most of your time before sleeping picturing them turning into a reality. Slowly, adding a detail into the scene This is a very personal review. I strongly related to many of the stories and the facts presented in this book because I have gone through or witnessed the same happening for people close to me. This book starts by telling the story of a girl who dreams of getting admitted to an Ivy league university yet gets rejected. For me, this is a book about failed dreams. These dreams you spend most of your time before sleeping picturing them turning into a reality. Slowly, adding a detail into the scene each day, what you will be wearing, what the place will look like, who will be with you at that moment and finally what you will be feeling. The image starts to get clearer in your mind day after day until you are so emotionally invested in your dream that you might reach the stage where your life depends on it.

It is also a book about expectations. Every single good thing that you do no matter in which part of your life makes people automatically expect something from you. These expectations do more harm than good with the immense pressure it puts on your shoulder fearing to let people down. This pressure makes you so invested in the moments people will witness opposed to the moments in your journey where you are alone. This way you are no longer enjoying your life. You are just enjoying single scattered moments, only the finish lines. Other than that, the whole walk is nothing for you but a mean to this finish line. And, sadly, this finish line does not last and is so empty and that feeling of satisfaction you get from not letting people down soon falls apart and you start searching for a new finish line instead of a new journey.

Most of the people seeking university degrees would strongly relate to the beginning of this book. At least, I do. I have experienced that same feeling depicted over the first few pages with the girl getting rejected at a university she was dreaming of getting admitted to.

College degrees are now tied to social mobility. Of course, there are many ways to climb up the social and economic ladder and they vary from a society to the other. But, college degrees remain to some extent the clearest pathways with the minimum risk of getting off track. This limited risk is most probably also why most people now pursue college degrees and the better the rank of the awarding university, the most secure your future is. That to some extend kills your hope for following your passion at the early years of your twenties as it does not seem as rewarding in terms of social mobility as the college degree. Even if you still do not know what you are passionate about and still searching, getting dragged along the track of the college degree will, most times, doom this search process and with passing years you give up on this search process just to follow the track with minimum risk. And in the end, you become a copy of a copy that made the mission of its life to secure something that has never been there in the first place. That is why it became almost a rule that students should get into the most selective institution they should get into and as life changing as the decision of starting an academic degree is, we almost do not give it enough thought and just aim for the most selective institution we can get into.

The college period of someone’s life is really a very critical stage because it is a big change in what they are used to in their life prior to starting their degree. Big changes in our lives and entering new stages challenge our personal narrative. The story we tell ourselves about what we are and how good we are in this. This is clear in college where you are used to a certain personal narrative or a view on yourself in high school and when entering college, things change and threat this personal image you drew for yourself. You can respond by modifying your personal narrative into a negative self-destructive one in the face of the new failures or you can simply stick to your ground and regard this negative thing as an incident and enlightening experience to improve your skills and personal narrative and simply tell yourself that things will get better. This happens not just when we enter college but also in so many other cases where we have a new job, be recently married have a new child and so on.

Despite the importance of this stage and how critical it is, the design of the educational system still ignores the complex psychological factors students are struggling through making the basic algorithms for making it work useless. Those responsible for designing the curricula are mainly focusing on what will make the students more qualified for the marketplace. The just add more and more stuff to make them more and more qualified because following the logical reasoning, this makes sense. What they miss is that they are dealing with human beings undergoing so many psychological stresses and trying to discover life and define their identities and sometimes too much might produce a negative effect and pushing the students to the limits without being considerate enough to see life from their perspective and understanding what they are going through from complexities in their life might lead to much worse outcomes than we think and I am talking about suicide here because of not being able to handle all of the imposed pressures from the studies and from the life in general.

The striking facts presented in this book show that despite the initial idea we get that college degrees can be the key to modifying the social ladder based only on merit supposing it provides equal chance for everyone to get their own way in climbing the social ladder, the reverse occurs. The statistics showing that the top colleges accepted much more rich students compared to those coming from low income families says a lot about how this system turned out to be hindering the social mobility and reinforcing the rigid social hierarchy with a very few exceptions. Also, getting into a better place in this academic field requires much more than being good at what you do. The way your connections facilitate your way upwards is sometimes more effective than your actual work itself.

The book shows some interesting facts about the selection process of the universities. Things we do not think are of great value compared to others such as extracurricular activities. However, the extracurricular activities mean much more than GPA. They display that the applicant has a well-rounded personality, they show passion, drive and time management. The more difficult the sport, the more it contributes. A 4.0 GPA student might be passive doing only what is required, studying over and over agian. The mentality of hard work is enough is not true because it takes much more to be successful in today’s world than being merely good in exams.

Though we sometimes think it is unfair what the universities follow in the criteria they pick their admitted students on, it still makes a little bit of sense looking at it from their perspective. Universities balance between students who can pay tuition to keep the university going and on the other hand high scoring students to improve the ranking of the university and the improved ranking, in turn, improve the tendency of high scoring students who can pay tuition to choose this university. This is not the case in elite universities which counts in the donations of alumni. But sometimes, even these universities can sometimes have backdoor admissions for the sake of donations. Even university admissions and operations should be thought of as businesses as long as there is money involved in the process which explains also the presence of some other factors like aid optimization where you evaluate the student in terms of how much money you are going to gain from them on the long run.
That said, we should start to doubt the credibility of the university ranking systems which do not say what we think they should. They are based in factors that are not reflective of the whole picture.

The college higher education system turned into a competitive marketplace where everyone is trying to survive on his own with the aim of providing better life for him and his family rather than the thought of improving the overall educational level which will in turn have benefits over all the society members. A change in this mentality has to be done. We should realize that it is not just about having a good degree. It is not about joining a selective university. It is about guaranteeing a sufficient level of good education to all community member because it is the responsibility of all of us.
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About Paul Tough

Paul Tough

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Paul Tough is the author, most recently, of The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us. His three previous books include How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, which was translated into 27 languages and spent more than a year on the New York Times hardcover and paperback best-seller lists. Paul is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazi ...more