Customer Reviews

The Best 351 Colleges, 2004 Edition

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I am applying to college and I already owned the 2003 version of the book (which is very good, actually), but I wanted to read some fresh info about the colleges I chose. So I ordered this "NEW" version and was very disappointed. NONE of the colleges of my choice had ANYTHING new written about them. The Students Speak Out was simply the same as in the previous book, and you can read it for FREE on the Princeton Review site. The only thing that changed was the ratings part. They even took the students' quotes section from the previous book. It was utterly useless for me.
This book is excellent as a first college guide, but I do NOT recommend it to anyone who has a previous version.

This book was definitely helpful in helping me sort through all the amazing colleges out there. But I found the rankings to be somewhat arbitrary and not really helpful. Also, they are all based on STUDENT SURVEYS, so they are inherently very subjective.

So it's a really good starting point, but don't expect to find your dream college using this book.

This is the best college guide for students with SAT scores above 1100. I don't reccomend it for students will lower scores because it concentrates on schools that expect a higher SAT.

This book rates college on academic as well as social factors so you can see if you fit in to that campus. You can read about dorms, party atmosphere, and what current students are like.

One feature that I felt was great was... "if you like a certain college you may want to look at"... This allows you to add new schools to consider.

My high school daughter continually used this book to make her choice. I highly reccomend this book!

This is an excellent source of college-bound students' information pertaining to the best 10% of higher educations institutions in the country (and two in Canada, I believe). I would recommend this for high school sophomores and juniors in the upper third of their high school graduating class who still have only vague ideas of where they wish to attend college.

The information in here is both pertinent and useful. The book includes such facts as diversity profiles, student survey results, average high school GPA of entering freshmen, and school-specific admissions advice.

Pick up The Best 351 Colleges today. You won't regret this purchase.

This is the book everyone buys and it is a good place to start the college search. However, for a book with such a reputation, it should not have typos and blatant errors. For example, they list the in-state tuition at William and Mary at $1880 a year. Granted it is a pretty big book, but it shouldn't be that hard to proofread. I had bought an earlier edition several years ago when my older child was looking at colleges and bought the 2004 edition this year for my younger one. I was a little disappointed that a lot of information was identical, especially in the student comment section, which leads me to believe that the information is outdated.All things considered though, it is one of the better guides.

This is an excellent reference work. It contains important
details on campus life, the student body, academics, selectivity,
student profiles, financial data and an overall assessment
of the respective institutions. On the contentment scale,
DePaul University, Dartmouth College, William Jewell College,
Whitman College, Stanford University, New College of Florida,
Elon University and Carleton College rank as top institutions.
This book is a goldmine for any college entrant seeking to obtain detailed qualitative information about colleges for
comparative purposes.

Do you want an Ivy quality education? Do you want to build character? Do you want to become a leader? Do you want a personal challenge? Do you want to understand the true meaning of education in America, as told by the all time greatest of educators, such as Thomas Jefferson? Then I recommend that all my students, as a companion to Robert Franek's wonderful book "The Best 351 Colleges", also read Norman Thomas Remick's wonderful book "West Point: Character Leadership Education: Thomas Jefferson". Then you can pour over the colleges and information in "The Best 351 Colleges", having a clearer insight and understanding of what you are looking for.