Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's 100 Top Schools [Paperback]

William J. Bennett (Introduction), Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Corporate Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0802845371 | ISBN-13: 978-0802845375 | Publication Date: July 1998

An intellectual road map to help parents and students make their way through deciding where they can get the best liberal arts education. "It is one of those rare books that cut through the information glut to the heart of the matter", says William Bennett in his Introduction.

Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Eerdmans Pub Co (July 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802845371
• ISBN-13: 978-0802845375
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,325,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

91 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Knowing the book's point of view makes it more useful., April 25, 1999

By 

[e-mail] "[e-mail]" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's 100 Top Schools (Paperback)

Getting your kid into a good college is a nerve-racking process for most parents. It certainly has been for us. We have found the customer reviews in Amazon very helpful. That prompts us to distill our ratings of the various guidebooks.

The best short reference on each college is the Princeton Review of The Best (311) Colleges. It gives ratings of academic quality, difficulty of admission, percentage admitted, etc. There is also a brief summary of college life and what each place might be looking for.

Peterson Guide is comprehensive, and has long write-ups for each school. There is a front section for each school, listed alphabetically within each state, and a back section with detailed profiles of selected institutions.

Fiske's guide is interesting, but he basically has something good to say for each school, so careful reading between the lines and for "damning with faint praise" is called for.

The Yale Insider's Guide is extremely subjective, with different students writing various reviews. We did not find it too reliable, except in conjunction with other books.

Likewise for Barrron's Guide to the Most Competitive Colleges. Recent alumni write of their (invariably positive) experiences. Take it with a grain of salt, or read carefully between the lines.

Choosing the Right College by ISN was extremely helpful. Some readers criticized it for being allegedly right wing. We did not find it so. Rather, knowing the point of view of the authors helped us evaluate their observations. Other books do not make their biases explicit. A feature of the book we found particularly helpful was the naming of excellent professors and departments in each college.

Antonoff's College Finder was interesting only in conjunction with other books.

Three books written from the perspective of college admissions officers were very interesting and helpful. They are The College Admissions Mystique, by Mayher, Getting In, by Bill Paul, and most of all A is for Admission by Michelle Hernandez. We strongly recommend that parents and the kids who are the applicants read at least one of these.

Another very helpful book was You're Gonna Love This College Guide, by Marty Nemko. It takes the student through the decision process of big vs. small, urban vs. country, elite vs. the level just below, geography, and so forth. That really got our daughter unstuck in her thinking process.

Loren Pope is another helpful author for those who think that not getting into Harvard is the end of the world.

Three books we did not find to be particularly helpful are Getting Into Any College, by Jim Good and Lisa Lee, The National Review College Guide, by Charles Sykes and Brad Miner (too out of date), and The Real Freshman Handbook, by Jennifer Hanson.

One book we found to be unexpectedly useful was Getting Into Medical School Today, by Scott Plantz, et. al. Even if your child is not interested in medical school, this book puts college in perspective for any post-college program.

We hope readers find our review helpful.

56 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing!, April 2, 1999

By 

Scott F. Hall (Colorado Springs, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's 100 Top Schools (Paperback)

If you're a parent looking for an in-depth guide to America's top colleges and universities, buy this guide. Hands down, the most in-depth guide available. Having worked at two top 20 universities in the past 15 years, I've talked to hundreds of parents and am increasingly amazed at how ill-informed they are about the higher education market. Upon visiting campus bookstores, they focus more on reviewing the quality of T-shirts than reviewing the quality of course textbooks. What most parents don't realize is how dramatically American higher education has changed since their college days. And,in most cases, for the worse. Considering the spiraling costs of higher education, this is tragic.

(I don't expect students to be so "educated" about such decisions. Many are as concerned about the social life as they are about the academic rigor. In most cases, however, parents are footing the bill and have SOME influence in the process).

Most guides provide information regurgitated by institutional public affairs offices. Or some guides just mirror superficial rankings. Fine. But with most colleges having their own web sites, who needs those guides? This guide, however, gives a good CURRENT 4-5 page snapshot of the profiled institution ( top 100 colleges and universities - with their web sites for that standard PR fluff). While it discusses student life and singles out excellent professors,its real value is in examining the various curricula and the institutional culture that forms them. Most parents have no idea that very few schools offer a core curriculum( in other words, a common body of knowledge that ALL graduates of that insitution should be familiar with upon graduation; it has been watered down and replaced over the years with faddish "distribution requirements."). This guide goes past the glossy brochures, past the high-profile sports programs, past the news-catching federally-funded massive research programs and looks at what the typical student will face in the classroom.

I attended two schools that are considered prestigious institutions, but would trade my education tomorrow for the traditional core curriculum still taught at lesser-known but academically-superior schools like Hillsdale College (independent) , Thomas Aquinas (Catholic) or St. John's (independent). These schools offer an EXCELLENT liberal arts foundation that ALL educated people should ( and used to ) have. For graduate study,it's a whole different ball game: choose another guide for that. That selection is MUCH easier.

This guide is definitely NOT for a parent or student who doesn't understand ( or care to understand) the idealogical shift that post modernism has inflicted on the academy. It is for those who want to understand how far it has creeped into America's top schools.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book! Insightful, analytic and honest information, December 6, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Minnepolis, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's 100 Top Schools (Paperback)

This is an outstanding resource for prospective students, and especially for parents of prospective students that want honest information and direct analysis, NOT marketing pablum from college admissions and P.R. departments.

I rate this book of one of the three most useful we have read, in getting educated about choosing colleges. Unlike many resources, this information goes to the heart of what is important, if you care about the quality of education your children will receive.

It also is refreshing to see honest and insightful analysis exposing the problems and perils of the political correctness movement in higher education; a book that speaks frankly about the good and the bad in the colleges it reviews.

My only suggestion: Expand your review to include more colleges! Perhaps edition two can include an update of the currently included colleges, and an additional 100 or so schools not yet reviewed.

In summary, I consider this resource an essential tool that both students and parents should read, and refer back to, during their campus visits and tours...and certainly during the time preparing to make this important choice.