Customer Reviews

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

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1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I first heard of this book from a professor on a radio show who has just written an excellent book called "The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses." The professor said that his book is very useful to inform parents about what is happening on campuses but he said that this guide was invaluable for parents who care about choosing the perfect college for their child.

My wife and I thought this guide was too thick for one of us to read so we divided it up into schools. 50 schools each. The essays were so much informative, well-written, and fun to read that we both read pretty much everything. It points out the truth about every school in the book, the good parts and the bad. The authors clearly do not like what certain schools have become (like Yale!) but they offer sound advice to parents. This guide is far superior to the National Review guide in that it doesn't give you a menu of mostly unknown small liberal arts schools but instead offers insight into all major universities and colleges. One of my daughters will be at college in 2 years and we had no idea how to set about choosing a college. We bought the Fiske guide but found it bland. This book has already helped us identify some great schools and informed us exactly what we should be looking for (both to identify the good and the bad). I highly recommend it.

I don't necessarily agree with all of the authors' prejudices. However, I do appreciate their openness in displaying those prejudices, so that I can take them into account as I read their assessments of the colleges they have chosen to review.

While it's clear that the authors have carefully selected professors and students who share their vocal conservatism to interview, the discussions are refreshingly frank and do provide useful insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the institutions reviewed.

I would like to see a similarly candid review of these campuses, written with a similar commitment to the intellectual life and academic excellence but with a somewhat more modern viewpoint.

If other readers know of such a book, I would appreciate it if they could include its name and author in a review of this book. Thanks in advance.

The Seattle public library system has a copy of this book now.

The very fact that one of the reviewers of this book can say that this guide reinforces the "wrong" kind of thinking shows how essential a book like this is. Political correctness and just plain bad and stupid scholarship have taken over many so-called top schools. Before you blow over $30,000 per year on your child's education, it would be nice to know where the money is going. My daughter will soon be looking for a rigorous school with an excellent English department. I didn't realize how difficult finding such an institution had become, but this book will definitely help us negotiate the process. I applaud the authors but I would make two suggestions: divide up the descriptions with some more sub-headings to make it easier to read and please, include more than 100 schools. Overall, a breath of fresh air and very welcomed.

This college guide is based on what have become on many college campuses today radical premises: 1) There are some important things to learn, and not all college freshmen already know these things (or what they are) before they even get to college; 2) before you criticize, condemn or just ignore all "Western" culture, perhaps you should actually know something about it; 3) colleges should encourage critical thinking and balanced study over simple absorption of commonly accepted points of view; and 4) the First Amendment should be allowed free exercise on college campuses. It does a good job of describing to what extent the colleges profiled in the book fit these premises.

If you haven't followed the changes in the American university in the last 30 years, while you were out some big changes have happened. The confluence of postmodern, poststructuralist theory and radical leftist politics have converted many universities into ideologically-driven intellectual killing fields. The misuse of the PM/PS discoveries of linguistic and cultural contexts to justify "deconstructing" all "truths" except those asserted by whomever is doing the deconstructing have led to the notion that there are no universal truths, only points of view and culturally-relative constructs. Of course, that point of view is asserted to be universally true across all cultures, but never mind. Why is this relevant to choosing a college?

The rise of PM/PS relativism has been used as the intellectual justification to abandon core curricula and the study of Western cultural heritage. If there are no truths, then there are only power elites pushing their culturally constructed points of view. In the case of Western civilization, this has meant the dominance of the oppressive, racist, imperialistic patriarchy. If Western culture is to be studied at all, it is only to be "deconstructed"," which means attacked and discredited in toto. Chaucer, Plato, Homer, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Kant, Milton, and all the rest are relevant only as examples of a culture that is corrupt and illegitimate at its core, end of discussion. Under this point of view, the shortcomings of Western civilization are the ONLY aspects of WC worth studying. Not merely that these may be valid aspects to study, but that they are the ONLY aspects worthy of study. This book attempts to root out colleges (and programs or departments within colleges) that still offer at least the option of studying the non-politically fashionable aspects of the Western canon.

That is why the premises of this book have become radical on today's campuses. You can glance through some of the other reviews of this book here and find evidence that these premises have also become associated with the dreaded "right wing." According to that point of view, this book should be stamped out, just as its premises should be purged from our college campuses, which they largely have. The fact is, this book does not advance right-wing political doctrine, but only the notion that there is a body of knowledge (the Western canon) worth learning, even for the purpose of knowledgeably criticizing it, and that people who do not agree in every respect with whatever political point of view is in fashion on a campus should not be silenced, intimidated or threatened. Radical, huh?

"Choosing the Right College" reports on the absence or existence of a core curriculum (as opposed to near or total lack of any curricular structure), in case you too cling to the archaic notion that colleges should offer some guidance as to what used to be called a "liberal" education might consist of. It attempts to describe the political environment and free speech climate. Free speech and the ability to critique the political views of professors are in notorious short supply on campuses these days. The term "politically correct" was first coined to refer to the curtailment of free speech on college campuses. Contrary opinions are routinely literally shouted down, purged from print or public discourse and labelled as "hate" speech or the like. In case you think this is not conducive to education, much less freedom, this book will give some hints as to which colleges allow more, or less freedom of expression and thought.

This book gives the college searcher a tool to get a clue as to the contentof the education they (or their progeny) are likely to get at the colleges profiled. It gives the reader a quick screening device for colleges most (and least) likely to meet the criteria set out in its premises. It will help the reader start formulating questions to find out more, as their college search progresses. No other college guide does this, that I am aware of, and I have looked at dozens.

As for this book advancing "right-wing" values? Well, it does alert the reader to the existence of core curricula in such right-wing bastions as, say, Columbia University. If you think that kind of thought should be stamped out, don't buy this book. Or better yet, buy it and stage a burning.

What a refreshing book! I was thrilled to find information that we could really use in picking the right institution for our daughter. Our standards are very different (it seems) from what passes for standards at many of today's colleges and universities. This book made us realize that many of the "better" schools would not be at all what we were looking for and some were to be avoided at all costs! It was thorough down to naming the most esteemed professors and instructors. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants another perspective on the big name schools. A godsend! There needs to be a sequel with the next 400 "best!"

A Book which doesn't pull any punches and stands by it's beliefs. Even if you disagree with what the book is saying, there is still much that can be learned from it.

I got this book when I was in high school as an aid to colleges, and I could not put it down. It was so entertaining and enlightening that I found myself reading every article for the sheer fun of it! Long after I had chosen my college, I still
continued to read this book for pleasure. Most college guides are superficial fluff; this book takes you inside each college, exposing its cultural and political atmosphere. Yes, the book is written from a right-wing perspective; that's why I personally found it so refreshing. Anyone who picks up this book should be warned of the book's orientation; perhaps the title should be changed? At any rate, I hope the editors of this wonderful college guide continue to issue updated versions in future years.