Journalist and higher education author Jeff Selingo gives you a peek behind the curtain of elite college admissions. He spent a year embedded in the selection process at the University of Washington, Emory University, and Davidson College. He followed a group of high-school seniors through the college search. And he introduces you to the players behind-the-scenes — the marketers, the financial-aid consultants, and the rankers — influencers who have an outsized role in who gets in and why.

The result is a narrative that dispels entrenched notions of how to compete and win at the admissions game, revealing that teenagers and parents have much to gain by broadening their notion of what qualifies as a “good college.”