Are you the customer or the product?

What do you have to do to get into college in 2022? Also: Understandably Live, plus a look back, and 7 other things worth your time.

Today’s newsletter is about college. It’s prompted by a good Understandably Live we have coming up this week.

I’ll be interviewing Becky Munsterer Sabky, a 13-year veteran of the admissions office at Dartmouth University, about her new book: Valedictorians at the Gate: Standing Out, Getting In, and Staying Sane While Applying to College.

I have more than a passing interest in this, as I’m sure many of you do, even if my daughter won’t be college-application-age for quite some time.

Frankly, three things popped out at me when I was asked if I’d like to talk with Sabky:

• First, the title. I know I’m literally judging a book by the cover here, but any riff off Barbarians at the Gate is likely to get my attention.

• Second, the endorsement: Adam Grant of Wharton, whose quote below the title says that this is “the most honest, most helpful book I’ve ever read on applying to college.”

• But most important: the opening pages, in which Sabky talks about her early admissions committee days, when she …