Translating Authentic Selves into Authentic Applications: Private College Consulting and Selective College Admissions

Stratification in selective college admissions persists even as colleges’ criteria for evaluating merit have multiplied in efforts to increase socioeconomic and racial diversity. Middle-class and affluent families increasingly turn to privatized services, such as private college consulting, to navigate what they perceive to be a complicated and opaque application process. How independent educational consultants (IECs) advise students can thus serve as a lens for understanding how the rules of college admissions are interpreted and taught to students. Through 50 in-depth interviews with IECs, I find that IECs encourage students to be authentic by being true to themselves but that demonstrating authenticity requires attention to how one’s authentic self will be perceived. Translating an authentic self into an authentic application also involves class-based and racialized considerations, particularly for Asian American students who are susceptible to being stereotyped as inauthentic. These findings suggest that efforts to improve diversity must be carefully implemented, or they risk reproducing inequality.