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

Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Author), William J. Bennett (Author), Winfield J. C. Myers (Author)

Book Description

Series: Choosing the Right College | Publication Date: April 2001

Introduction by William J. Bennett

In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s critically acclaimed college guide, Choosing the Right College, 110 of the nation’s top colleges and universities are examined in essays averaging 3,000 words. The first edition (1998), which saw four printings, set new standards for the college guide market, including informed, critical essays, the names of the best professors at each campus, and rigorous research. No other college guide so closely examines every school’s academic, political, and social situation. Additions to this second edition include ten more essays, revised and updated coverage of every school, a new essay on liberal learning, and increased coverage of student life. For practical help, tuition, enrollment, and other important facts are included for each school.

Product Details

• Paperback: 762 pages
• Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; 2 Exp Sub edition (April 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080284801X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802848017
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.9 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,578,970 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars By Thomas Sowell In His Column, August 31, 2001

By 

By Thomas Sowell - See all my reviews

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

August 24, 2001 (in his syndicated newspaper column)
Choosing a college
By Thomas Sowell
About this time every year, high school seniors and their parents start trying to figure out how to choose a college. With application deadlines for some colleges starting as early as this fall for students who want to begin college next fall, there is not a lot of time. When you take into account the lead time needed to apply to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test or the American College Testing Program's exam -- and then the time before the results are tabulated and sent out to the college admissions offices -- there is not much time left, even for those students who are applying for colleges whose deadlines are next January or February.
Nevertheless, a hasty decision can have repercussions that last for years. Campus stresses can lead to psychiatric problems, drug dependency or even suicide. It happens from the Ivy League to Podunk U. One lovely young woman committed suicide by jumping from the building in which I had my office at UCLA and I saw her body in the bushes on my way to work. Another whom I encountered had picked up a devastating drug habit at Harvard.
Much more is involved in choosing a college than whether they have prestigious professors or high SAT scores.
On some campuses, black students will live as segregated a life as in the days of the Jim Crow South, and find other black students resenting them if they spend their time in the library or at the computer lab, instead of in racial breast-beating activities. But the atmosphere is very different on other campuses where students of all races can make education their top priority.
None of this is covered in the brightly colored brochures that the college admissions offices send you and most college guides don't get down to this kind of nitty gritty. However, there is one college guide that does. It is titled "Choosing the Right College" and it has an introduction by Bill Bennett. The National Catholic Register calls it: "A godsend for anyone who wants to know how to beat the academic establishment and actually get an education."
There are many colleges and universities where it is possible to get a fine education -- but where you can also graduate without learning anything that you don't want to learn. You can get a degree from some of the most prestigious institutions in America without having a clue about science, history, math or economics, because you take only the courses you want to take.
The latest edition of Choosing the Right College quotes a Harvard student: "You can get away without learning a scrap of European or U.S. history." It also quotes a Harvard professor who says that the core curriculum there "is absolutely onerous in its gobbling up of students' time in courses that often enough are weak fare." And for four years of this, you are paying over a hundred grand in tuition!
Choosing the Right College is not just about muck-raking. It also tells you about colleges and universities that may not have big names, but which offer a finer education than some other places that are household words. For example, it calls Claremont McKenna College in Southern California "an excellent stomping ground for any student serious about his education." Of Rhodes College in Tennessee, it says: "Of the 110 institutions reported on in this guide, Rhodes is among the most distinctive and distinguished."
Institutions with strong educational traditions that are under siege from more ideologically faddish elements on campus are also covered -- the University of Chicago, Davidson and Birmingham-Southern, for example. So are places like Reed College, where the radical fads prevail, as "politicization" has become "entrenched," and where the college is described as "a farm team for graduate schools."
Choosing the Right College does not rank institutions numerically, the way U.S. News & World Report does in its guide called America's Best Colleges. That is part of the reason why Choosing the Right College is the best of the college guides and America's Best Colleges is the worst.
There is no such thing as the best college. The real question is whether a particular college is right for a particular individual. The more three-dimensional picture presented in Choosing the Right College helps parents and students to make the right choices for themselves, given the student's own abilities, interests and priorities.

If your local bookstore doesn't have this college guide, ask them to order it. It is well worth the effort.
©2001 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must have" for families with college-bound students, May 21, 2002

By A Customer

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

Choosing a college is a tough task--whether you're the student, their parent or their college counselor. This book definitely makes the process easier.

The typical high school junior receives dozens of glossy college viewbooks in the mail from the time they complete their first PSAT throughout their senior year. These viewbooks would have you believe that there's not a college out there that doesn't have very small classes, bright and multi-talented students, professors who are at each student's beck and call, and (let's not forget the classic) a class or two held outdoors, preferably with a beach nearby.

While the picture is a pretty one, it's not complete. This book clues you in about what education is really like at some of the nation's most revered colleges and universities. The editors approach the book from the viewpoint that a classic liberal arts undergraduate education is the most valuable to the individual and society so their natural focus is on how well this type of education is provided at various institutions. A classic liberal arts education highlights Western Civilization's developments in math, science and literature and this book's editors are determined in revealing how closely each college's core curriculum reflects that bent.

If, instead, you're looking for a college or university where the dogma is politically correct, where there is no absolute truth and where students call the shots, you might still appreciate reading this book because it is clear in explaining just what campuses feature that type of education.

Each school is reviewed through interviews with current professors and students, with detailed evaluations of curriculum, with a bit of the school's history and goals, and even, in some cases, by checking out which library sections are well-stocked and with what type of books. The editors reveal each school's highly-politicized departments, if any, as well as what student life is really like.

While I would have liked to have seen more colleges reviewed in this book, the authors do a good job of targeting the "name" schools and also including many lesser-known institutions which the editors feel are doing a an exceptional job in educating students. This helped our family incredibly because it steered us to several schools we might not have considered.

How accurate is the book? I can only speak anecdotally; we have a son who attends Thomas Aquinas College (we first heard of it in this book) and, after a year of school, he re-read the review of his school and found it absolutely on target. With such a solid correlation between what was written about TAC and the way it actually is, I have faith in the editors' reviews of the other schools in this book.

In short, this book is a real gem, with solid information that is much more revealing than the typical college guidebook.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but incomplete, February 10, 2002

By 

David E. Levine (Peekskill , NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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

I like this book for the type of informtion it gives on colleges, such as the political atmosphere and the type of curriculum. Many schools have eliminated core requirements and indeed, some have actually added politically chareged courses as required while eliminating traditional, time tested courses in Western Civilization. The analyses are useful and are very detailed. This is not a quick glimpse into the schools covered, but rather, a detailed description. I graduated from Vassar College years ago and had the impression that it was a bastion of political correctness. The profile in this book bears this out. This guide is truly unique and useful.

I have a major problem with this guide, however. There are many colleges I wanted to read about but they were not included in the book. For example Binghmapton University is covered but none of the other schools in the SUNY system are. There was nothing about several goog schools in Pennsylvania such as Franklin and Marshall, Dickinson, Bucknell, Lehigh, Gettysburg, etc. Ohio State University is covered well but there is nohing on other major schools in Ohio's state system such as Ohio University and Miami University (or for that matter, Universitey of Miami in Florida). The book is good, as far as it goes, but many, if not most of the colleges I was interested in reading about are not profiled.