Golden, Daniel 1957-

PERSONAL: Born 1957. Education: Harvard University, B.A.

ADDRESSES: Office— Wall Street Journal, 200 Burnett Road, Chicopee, MA, 01020.

CAREER: Journalist. Springfield Daily News, Springfield, MA, staff reporter, 1978-81;Boston Globe, Boston, MA, regional correspondent, 1981, Sunday “Focus” section writer, 1986-93, medical investigative reporter, 1993-94, projects reporter, 1994-98;Wall Street Journal, Boston, MA, reporter, 1999-2000, senior special writer, 2000, became deputy bureau chief.

AWARDS, HONORS: Pulitzer Prize, 2004, for beat reporting; George Polk Award, 1985, for business reporting, 2004, for education reporting; National Headliner Award, 1989, feature writing category, 1999, for beat reporting category; First Place Award, Sigma Delta Chi, 1989, for magazine reporting; First Place Award, Sunday Magazine Editors, 1990, for investigative reporting; First Place Award, AP Sports Editors, 1993, for investigative reporting; National Award, Education Writers Association, 2002, 2004, for education reporting.

WRITINGS

The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, Crown (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: Daniel Golden is a journalist whose professional career saw him based in Massachusetts for most of his life. Starting as a staff reporter for the Springfield Daily News, Golden moved up the journalistic ranks with his work at the Boston Globe before becoming deputy bureau chief at the Boston office of the Wall Street Journal. During his time at the Wall Street Journal, Golden published his first book, The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates.

Centered around the American secondary education system, The Price of Admission exposes the admission policies of the top-tier universities in the United States and how money and parental alumni status mean more than one’s SAT scores and grades. Golden offers statistics, interviews from Ivy-League admissions officers, and stories about the children of America’s rich and famous. Matt Fleischer-Black, reviewing the book in Corporate Counsel, found that “it makes for an eye-opening report about how the affluent maintain their hold on the top rungs of the class ladder.” In the New York Times Book Review, Michael Wolff found Golden to be bitter about top college admissions practices, commenting: “Golden is something of an avenger, exacting retribution for too much wealth and status by dishing about every rich and famous father’s kid’s lackluster SAT scores.” It is the very stories, however, that a critic writing in Kirkus Reviews most enjoyed about the book, stating: “While the fact that the rich and famous are treated differently is hardly news, this report’s abundance of juicy stories of outrageous favoritism makes for an absorbing read.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Atlantic Monthly, October, 2006, review of The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, p. 126.

Corporate Counsel, October, 2006, Matt Fleischer-Black, review of The Price of Admission, p. 147.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2006, review of The Price of Admission, p. 615.

New York Times Book Review, September 17, 2006, Michael Wolff, review of Price of Admission, p. 20.

Publishers Weekly, June 12, 2006, review of The Price of Admission, p. 41.

University Business, November, 2006, review of The Price of Admission, p. 20.*