With the crisp pacing of a suspence novelist, veteran reporter Bill Paul follows five high-school honor students and the dean of admission at Princeton through each step of the college admissions process. As the narrative unfolds, we watch the students' successes and blunders as they ponder where to apply, write and rewrite their essays, endure alumni interviews, agonize over early decision, and anxiously await the April delivery of the hoped-for thick envelope that means acceptance, or the dreaded thin envelope that contains a curt rejection. What emerges is the clearest picture ever of this complex, frustrating, and highly imperfect process, and how it truly works.