Customer Reviews

Colleges That Change Lives (REV. Ed.)

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I used to have herd mentality. I thought schools like Harvard, Yale and Stanford are the best. I moved to Northern California to get close to Stanford and Berkeley. Then, I read "Profscam" and "The Hollow Man" by Charles Sykes and I was greatly disappointed in our higher education (for more information also read "Tenured Radicals" and "Illiberal Education" by other authors). The Fisk's and USNews & World Report college guides mention none of the cancerous problems mentioned in Sykes' books.

The colleges metioned in this book "Colleges that change lives" do not have the problems mentioned in Sykes' books.

Now on the positive side, the 40 colleges profiled in this book are gems. Mr. Pope has done a great service for the parents, students, society and especially our country. He has done excellent research. He personally visited these campuses, some several times. Buy this book. Read it and tell your neighbors about it. Buy a copy for your children's high school counselors.

In this 2nd edition 3 colleges have been removed: Bard, Franklin & Marshall and Grinnell. Three are added: Ursinus, Agnes Scott and Wabash. Also added are 2 sections: one section for Learning Disabled and another for Homeschooler.

We all love our children and want to do our best for them. It is important to find out what their natural gifts and talents are. When they know what they are naturally gifted in they can make intelligent choice about what kind of college profiled in this book they should attend. Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation provides excellent methods in finding out what a person's natural talents are.

All in all, this book deserves 20 stars!!! The best collge guide there is. And never let a small volume fool you. It is packed with gems.

Loren Pope's "Colleges That Change Lives" is arguably the best, and certainly one of the most influential, college guide books ever published in the U.S. Over the past five years its stature, along with that of its companion book,"Looking Beyond the Ivy League", has grown to the point that it is a "must read" for any college bound junior or senior, parents, and high school guidance counselors. Meticulously researched and beautifully argued, the message in "Colleges That Change Lives" about the continued developmental growth impact of certain types of liberal arts colleges even manages to supercede the excellent profiles of the specific 40 colleges in highlighted in the book. When my oldest son applied to college several years ago, he focused largely on colleges in the book, and we have all been very pleased with his progress at one of them (Denison). In that sense, the book itself has already helped change many lives.

That being said, the revised edition of the book is somewhat of a disappointment. Yes, three colleges have been changed (the dropped ones are now probably not accepting many students with less than A- averages, hence they no longer fit the strict definition implied by the book's subtitle!). And yes, there is a solid new chapter about ADD and learning disorder issues as they relate to these types of schools. BUT the rest of the updates are superficial, at best. Quotes from students and teachers that appeared in the first edition are still there. Mr. Pope's own insights and conclusions about the colleges are repeated verbatim. One gets the impression that he and/or the editors made some quick phone calls to the schools that Mr. Pope visited so exhaustively for the first edition, then changed a few sentences here and there. In short, virtually all the views, quotes and anecdotes from students, teachers, and even Mr. Pope himself are now literally over five years old. To put that into an obvious perspective, that's longer than an entire four year undergraduate cycle. Surely the changes at some, if not most, of these schools deserve a more up to date assessment at ground level. Yes, it would have taken six months of research to visit all of the schools again in depth, but that is something that Mr. Pope's readers have a right to expect.

Beyond this, perhaps the other perspective missing from this "revised" edition is some discussion on the growing importance of at least some technology knowledge becoming integral to a liberal arts education. By that I'm not referring to a specific, point-in-time, base of technical knowledge (Mr. Pope does a wonderful job arguing why this is generally irrelevant), but rather the importance of developing a technical perspective in the context of "even" a liberal arts education. How are different liberal arts colleges doing on that front? In particular, how are the 40 profiled here doing? We don't know because the question itself was not yet as relevant in the early days of the mid 1990s digital/internet revolution as it is today.

The above criticisms notwithstanding, "Colleges That Change Lives" is still an important book - as much for the perspective it provides as for the general feel of the colleges it covers. Let's just hope that the next edition of Mr. Pope's superb, originally groundbreaking book will not include quotes and perspectives that otherwise by then would be almost a decade old!

This book was a key factor in college selection for our seventh child to attend college. Without it, she would probably be at a top-name university which is best suited for graduate students, and not the community of learning of a small liberal arts school. What's more, she was offered merit scholarships (not need-based) from 7 of 8 of the schools on Pope's list to which she applied. (The so-called "top" universities give very few merit-based scholarships). She is in her second year at the College of Wooster, and I believe that she is happier and receiving a better college experience than she would have at Duke, where she was also accepted. The only drawbacks are that very few have heard of these schools, and the nearly-universal "conventional wisdom" fails to recognize the important truths that Loren Pope's books explain. His book "Looking Beyond the Ivies," was also helpful. This book may turn your college search upside down!

As a parent of a senior, I became engulfed with the gossip and happenings of college admissions.

I may know more than the average person about the topic. I had applied to schools at various levels. My siblings had too. We had attended good to great schools. And, our father was a professor at two major universities -- those with ivy on their walls.

This book reminds me of that one clear day in my childhood when I thought my father was not nearly as dumb as my teenage attitude knew him to be, and I had the nerve to ask him, "Dad, where are the best students for your graduate studies coming from -- name the schools." He immediately spat out many of the small ivies in the northeast. I did not want that as my mother would be too close.

Then he said these strange words, "Grinnell, MacAllister, Carleton, U Chicago, Pomona, Pitzer, Occidental . . ."

I then saw the light -- I then knew he was not as dumb as all that.

This book takes some of those schools and many more of the great unknowns -- what some call the selected schools, not the selective. They are pearls. They are where Ph.D.'s go to teach. And the students, through that amazing nuturing process, mature to become much better minds than when they walked their first steps on the campus grounds.

These liberal arts schools epitomize the concept of higher education.

His simple advice -- the ivies (for undergraduate) are overrated and the schools in this book are HIGHLY underrated. Look at the schools in this book and think about applying to the few that match your personality.

You will not be disappointed.

And, it makes a great read for the busy body parents who are more into the college "thing" than their over-tested and over-questioned seniors.

This book was an excellent guide to the choices when I was a C+ student in high school. Without it, I would not be in my second semester at Earlham College, a Quaker college of 1100 students in Richmond, Indiana. The acedemic experience here has been a thousand times better than my large suburban high school in New Jersey. This book is a true gem in the search for the best college for you. It puts the person before the numbers.

My son had visited several colleges, and was having a terrible time figuring out which ones he would "fit in" and get the best educational experience from. He ended up reading this book and visited a few of them that he liked the descriptions of. After applying to, and getting accepted at, four of the schools in this book (and two not in the book) he ended up at Denison University. He's in his second year, and just loves it. I've always felt a little "indebted" to this book, so I thought I'd leave this review.

Useful book is not an at-your-fingertips style guide book. Better to read this cover-to-cover or one chapter at a time.

Pope writes in depth about colleges that are not Ivy, not the usual state institutions, not well-known. Plenty of options for alternative curricula and scheduling (like trimester systems, or 'great books' teaching). Some of the schools in the book are already "hot", and some have a narrow scope that would be perfect only for a minority of students. That's the beauty of this book: there is a good variety of schools and systems. Do your own additional research, but use this as a stepping-off point.

Generally, the writer takes care to examine each school on its own merit, and each institution gets its own chapter. Nice to see that the author interviews students at each college, asking questions about food, faculty attitude, social life, recreation, as well as academic matters.

It's a good read, valuable data for your college search process.

Other good references: Fiske Guide, Choosing the Right College (ISI), and the Kaplan Newsweek issue that comes out every summer.

I had never realized what a good college experience was supposed to be until I read this book. The close contact with professors who really care about all the students was a concept you don't get at the University of Texas. Both my children have read the book and are making plans to visit several of the schools covered. Highly recommended.

This is an excellent book about lesser-known yet excellent colleges. It does not include those in the west. DO read this book with a grain of salt, though. The author praises these schools so much that you have to read other college guides in order to get a more balanced view. For example, He rightly praises Hampshire College for its fine film department (Ken Burns is an alum) but he does not tell you how isolated it is or the fact that there are a lot of drugs on campus. So DO read at least four other guides besides this one. Do your homework and compare write-ups in all the guides to get a balanced view. Definitely visit campuses before you decide where to apply or go to. Otherwise this is an excellent book with a great deal of useful information.

I actually went to the traveling show for this book where I later bought, and had signed by Mr. Pope himself. His personal recomondation out of the 40 was Evergreen State, the college that ironically was only 14 miles away from my home in Shelton Washington. I'm currently going there and couldn't be happier. His book has great descriptions of the 40 colleges, but additional research and visits are necessary. These colloges aren't cookie cutter, and will require a little bit more investigation then Ivy league, or traditional state schools. The colleges are top notch, though Evergreen is the only public, and for a while the only western school on the list. It is now joined by Portland's Reed, and Walla Walla's Whitman. Word of warning, though the colleges are the best of the best, the majority are very expensive, and may not be as willing to give out money as Mr. Pope wrote. The colleges in this book are for those looking to improove, or those that already love to learn. I recomend that you read "Colleges" before any US news or Princeton Review guide, as they will claim these colleges as phonies or krum-bum, and you will be truly missing out.