Ever wonder if college admissions officers actually read your application or if they just toss it into the “yes” or “no” pile? If you’ve ever been rejected from a school, especially one that you really liked, it’s easy to spend days, weeks or years wondering if your whole life would be different if you had taken one more AP class or didn’t sleep through that semester of early morning pre-calc. Applying to college is tough, but awaiting the verdict and wondering if you’ve made the right decision is even tougher.

The Gatekeepers, by Member of the Tribe Jacques Steinberg, shows what it’s like on the other side of the ivy-covered stone walls. The book follows an admissions officer, Ralph Figueroa, at Wesleyan University, an “Unnamed Gorgeous Small Liberal Arts School,” through the process of recruiting, reading and rendering a decision. Ralph shows how admissions officers use applicants’ grades, test scores, activities, race and essays to figure out who they are as people, instead of just flipping through applications looking for the highest SAT scores.

The Gatekeepers follows several real-life high school seniors, including Jordan, who saw Wesleyan as his back-up school, and Becca, whose essay was about getting expelled for eating a “tainted” brownie. It explores what makes each candidate stand out and what makes admissions think twice about checking the “admitted” box. The book even talks about somewhat controversial issues like letting race, socioeconomic status and family alums play a factor in the decisions.

Ralph shows that even admissions officers are humans struggling to make the right choices. Despite his wife’s urgings to “read faster, say no,” Ralph and other officers spend their winter months agonizing over how to accept one out of every seven students in an attempt to find a class that will reach its fullest potential. Often questioning his own judgment, he admits that it doesn’t always seem fair, but when there are over 6,000 applicants competing to fit into a class of 700, the pressure is on and some difficult decisions have to be made.

For more on college admissions, check out the March/April issue of JVibe! Email us to get a copy and subscribe here.

Caitlin Wilson is the editorial intern for JVibe and is a junior at Emerson College in Boston.