Customer Reviews

The College Admissions Mystique

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Having just finished the admissions process with my son I think I must have read nearly every book on the subject. The College Admissions Mystique is very good at giving you an insider's look at what happens behind the closed doors of the admissions office. It's an excellent resource for those who want to know how admissions decisions are (and aren't) made.

I asked my son which books he found most helpful and here is his response:

For figuring out which colleges to apply to and what each college is all about nothing beats the Petersons Guide To Colleges.

For a real how-to guide book on completing the application and writing the college essay nothing beats Get Into Any College: Secrets Of Harvard Students by Jim Good and Lisa Lee.

For preparing for the SAT and other tests the best was the Cracking The System series by the Princeton Review.

I too read all of the above books and found them extremely helpful and would highly recommend them to both parents and students who are facing this challenge.

Good luck! Gabe Truman, CA

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.

As an admissions professional, I highly recommend this book will as required reading for all new admission officers. It gives the reader a great perspective on what is happening on the other side of the coin. Mayher does an excellent job of reminding us of the panic and worry that goes through a young person's head while waiting for the acceptance letter.

Some of the information is more relelvant to the hyper-competitive East Coast market, but even parents students in the Midwest, South and West will be able to glean helpful hints from this fine work.

Mayher promotes a very pro-active search (which is the best way to find the best college for you) and while it is not a glorified advertisement like Loren Pope's Colleges that Change Lives, it does present some ideas for what constitutes "quality" in an institution.

I am a high school student, currently in the midst of the college process. A friend of mine gave me this book about a month ago. After reading no more than five pages I was overcome with the compulsion to send it to my parents. The book is readable, well written and Mayher says the things that students want their parents to know. It is hard to get in to college, and the pressure to get into the "right" college can be overwhelming. More importantly, the average person doesn't really know much about that "right" college they want their son or daughter to go to, just that it's "good."
His experience as an educator and college counselor have given him extremely valuable information about the college process. Mayher suggests a pro-active search for the right college for each individual. He makes light of the myth of college selectivity, and covers topics that can take you through the entire process. I would suggest reading this book well before your child begins the college search, it can help you understand how to attack the problem and open lines of communication.

As an educator, former college counselor, and parent, I urge those gearing up for the college process to put this book at the top of the pile. In short, the author understands what parents and their children truly need to know in order to get through this often mind-numbing process. Well-written, smart, and spiced with enough anecdotes to make it a truly enjoyable read, this book succeeds where others fall short. Do your family a favor and read this book---you'll be glad you did.

This is a very original book. It does not give specific college recommendations. The author makes the case that there are tens of colleges that offer exactly what you need in terms of academic and life experience. The colleges are as individual as the college bound students themselves. Therefore, the author feels it is futile for him to come up with generic college lists. He wants instead all the students and their families to conduct their own research to come up with their own selection of attractive colleges.

The author does a very good job of teaching us how to conduct such research. Beyond the obvious tips (websites, school counselors, college guides, college visits) he mentions several other ways to research colleges. One is to scrutinize in detail the course catalogues of colleges. These are available online. This may be one of the quickest and most insightful ways of contrasting differences between colleges. This seems evident. However, after reading nearly 15 college guides this is the first time I read about it.

Bill Mayher also includes interesting material regarding the limit of the SAT in estimating either intelligence or future college success. He mentions that an increasing number of colleges, including several selective Northeastern liberal colleges, are doing away with testing requirements. He shares interesting findings on the theory of multiple intelligences and emotional intelligence referring to the work of Howard Gardner and Daniel Coleman. According to Gardner and Coleman, there are many other dimensions to intelligence that ultimately determine success in life that are not captured by the SAT.

Mayher has an insightful understanding of Early Decision and Wait List. He is very pragmatic in his recommendation on when and how to use Early Decision and how to deal with Wait List.

Mayher also makes original suggestions such as taking a year off between high school and college. This is to allow oneself to mature and render the upcoming college experience more meaningful instead of a potential grinding continuation of high school. He also suggests that if you want the prestige of a BA from a top college such as Harvard, there is a really easy way. Do it through Harvard's evening extension program. You will avoid any foreboding testing and GPA requirements. Yet, you will have identical classes with the same textbook, teachers, etc... He argues that you will earn a degree that is indistinguishable from the one you would earn by attending the regular day classes. Even if the above tips are not for everyone, they are worthwhile to consider.

Let me recommend other excellent books on the subject. Hernandez "A is for Admission" and "Acing the College Application" are both excellent. "The Early Admission Game" by Avery and Fairbanks is a must for any one aiming at the most selective schools. Also, many of the Greenes' Guides written by the Greene brothers are very good. These include "Inside the Top Colleges", "Making it into a Top College," "The Public Ivies", "The Hidden Ivies."

Bill Mayher's entertaining, easy to read book exposes the nonsense surrounding the often traumatic college admissions process. He can help your family work through the tedium, tension, and tangles that the process usually entails, as he puts the kabosh on the mistaken notion that the hardest school to get into, is the best one for your child to attend.

The College Admissions Mystique, by Bill Mayher, was a fabulous read. It was easy to understand and offered a lot of valuable information. The book addresses both parents and students, and I would hightly recomend it to both, especially those just getting started. It is never to soon to start reading this book.

If you are enthralled with college admissions, there are only two books that you need to read to understand the insanity of one of the most important decisions of your child's life (who thinks the decision is not necessarily his or her own). They are this book and Looking Beyond the Ivy League: Finding the College That's Right for You

Read those two books and ignore the rest. If you need a list of colleges, go to Pope's alter ego book Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools You Should Know About Even If You're Not a Straight-A Student.

If you need more lists, go to Fiske or Barron's or US News or Cool Colleges: For the Hyper-Intelligent, Self-Directed, Late Blooming, and Just Plain Different or The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, 2010: Students on Campus Tell You What You Really Want to Know, 36th Edition. Any one of these will suffice.

But, Pope and Mayher are the kings of insight. They deliver what you need to hear, not the same old cliched items.

And, if you ever get a chance, see Mayher when he comes to a school. He is a stand up comic whose oration before the parents is better than his book.

Buy this book! You will not regret one penny spent.

This book is not bad, but not as good as "The Fiske Guide To Getting Into the Right College" (my top choice), or "Making It Into A Top College" (my second choice).

This book is very good and different from other college guides in saying that to buy prestige and not substance by going to selective colleges is like buying status in purchasing cars during the '50s. Nobody bothered to check under the hood. People just assume that brand means everything.

The best part of the book is chapter 16 about how to make yourself a college list. It is very realistic. It saves one from aiming too high or too low in college selection.

I think the biggest lack in this book is that the author does not recommend a set of colleges that he thinks is better than the selective colleges that he so distasted of. Such a list would have guided the students and parents to better college choices.