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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incredibly useful info. You got to have it!, December 8, 2003
This review is from: The Best 351 Colleges, 2004 Edition (Paperback)
This is a must read for all families working on developing a short list of colleges for their high school kids. There is about 3,500 colleges in the U.S. Just by buying this book, you have now a selection of the top 10% of this large college pool. This guide provides so much more data than the U.S. News college ranking. There are over 60 college ranking categories associated with academics, quality of life, financial aid, and many other factors. Each schools are rated along three major factors: Campus Life, Academics, Selectivity. The feedback from students is invaluable, because this is how you find the real dope on any aspect of a specific college. There are several great tools associated with this book located at the Princeton Review website. One of them include a free online application utility where you can save you data. So, you don't need to reenter your personal data when you apply to different school. But, the most incredible tool is the Counselor-O-Matic feature. You enter your GPA, test scores (or what you anticipate these will be), and your preferences in terms of size, type, and another 20 or more defining categories. Out of the 351 school database, the Counsel-O-Matic gives you a selection of 5 best matches for your Reach, Match, and Safe school. If you register at the site (free), you will get 20 choices in each category (total 60). If you then click on any of the choices, you can get a ton of information regarding student feedback, rankings in academics, quality of life and many other categories. You also get a profile of the freshman class GPA, and test scores. You also get info of what is really important for the admission officers from this specific school. These represent invaluable tips that will maximize your chance of getting in. All the information extracted from the website is included in the book. The website is just a nifty way of using database technology to query and extract the relevant information you want.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Guide to get Started, August 25, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: The Best 351 Colleges, 2004 Edition (Paperback)
This is the guide that everyone talks about. They talk about it because it contains lists like "Got milk" and "Got beer" or "Most nostalgic for Bill Clinton" (vs. Ronald Reagen)and about sixty other categories. There is usually a lot of hype about who gets number one on what list (for example, which "party school" is number one). In actuality the specific rankings mean little - what matters somewhat is if the school made the top twenty of a list at all. For example, Mount Holyoke went from number one to off the top twenty to somehere around seventeen for "Most Beautiful Campus" during the past four years. Did the campus really change from year to year? No, but you can look at the trend- Holyoke probably has a pretty nice looking campus. Get it? If a school makes the top twenty of a list anytime in the past couple of years, it probably does fall within that "type." BTW, the rankings are not particurally helpful for the majority of schools that don't make any lists. What IS most helpful about this book is that it gives pretty on the ball descriptions of the colleges. Most schools we visited really did seem like their PR description. Granted, nothing replaces a visit, but if you know that you don't want a school dominated by Greek life and the PR says "Frats dominate the social scene" you will also know that maybe you shouldn't bother to visit at all. This is a good book to get started when you're first looking around, and making a list of "schools to visit." It should be noted, though, that only the highly selctive, well known (relatively), or popular State/City colleges tend to make the book. There are many fine colleges that don't make the book- they tend to be either less selective or less known. For example, all Ivy League, Seven Sister, Big Name Sport Schools, and Big State Universities make the list. But while "Brooklyn College" makes the list (it's a popular New York City college) many finer, better "ranked", but lesser known colleges do not. Also, with the exception of the city/state colleges in this book, most schools profiled are looking for at minimum 1150-1200 SATs and a B average and three school activities to a maximum of 1550 SAT, A average, and a resume to rival God. If you're not a good, active student, this may not be the book for you. Happy Hunting. I'll be glad to bring my offspring to college this weekend.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
2004?, February 12, 2004
This review is from: The Best 351 Colleges, 2004 Edition (Paperback)
This book is an extensive guide to a very large number of schools. It has all the basic facts about these schools, as well as insider information from students that you won't find in the admissions pamphlets you were sent. However, much of this data is out of date. The numbers are at least three years old for a lot of the schools I was looking at: tuition is understated and enrollment figures are off. The book is also riddled with typos, mainly in the numbers department. Despite poor editing, it is still a useful guide to have. Although, I might add, what the students said about the school I chose was way off, so take their advice with a grain of salt.
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