The task of college admissions officers is to identify applicants who are likely prepared to succeed at their institution. While student preparation is the domain of the continually changing K-12 educational landscape, it is left to college admission officers to evaluate the extent of that preparation on a student-by-student basis. In the effort to identify qualified applicants, particularly for less selective institutions where the percent of those admitted exceeds the national average of 68% (Clinedinst, 2019), the ability to read and understand college-level texts is still an expectation of professors and has been identified as important to the applicant's success (ACT, 2006; MacPhail, 2019). In this paper, the authors offer a perspective on the essential role of reading and how institutions might consider it in a mix of indicators predicting student success.