Customer Reviews

Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges

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If you ever hanker to think that your child may have been better off going to that school whose name everyone knows, pull out this book and read the first 20 pages and you will become instantly relaxed.

In a nutshell, Pope espouses that liberal arts undergraduate education in the Ivies is faltering, if not failing, but America has plenty of great liberal arts educational centers and they are at the numerous well established liberal arts colleges (LAC's) of America. Those LAC's and some "other" LAC's are great places for undergraduate education. Some of those "other" LAC's are the topic of this book.

This is the old book (Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools You Should Know About Even If You're Not a Straight-A Student) with quips at the end of the 40 schools which update his research of each respective institution. He has added passages at the end of the 40 schools to describe what has happened at some of the schools which makes his statement(s) of a decade ago as true or even truer than when originally written. In short, the LAC's of this book are not only still good schools, most are better schools than when he delivered their names in the original book.

He writes well. He is very persuasive. And, in the end, his arguments clearly show each school's strength through his writing skills and by the statistics recited throughout this book.

If you want more, there are two others on this same line of reasoning: The College Admissions Mystique by Bill Mayher and Looking Beyond the Ivy League: Finding the College That's Right for You by Loren Pope. If you think Ivy (for undergraduate) is the answer before reading these three books, you may discover a change of opinion after reading these books.

As an Independent Educational Consultant, I often give this book to my students that think they want to attend a big university or a name brand school. Often students fall through the cracks at these well-known schools, but the Colleges That Change Lives are nurturing environments that do not let students become just a number. If a student has graduate school aspirations, I especially recommend this book, because these schools have much better track records for preparing and having their students accepted into first choice graduate programs. One of the criteria for being in Colleges That Change Lives is a school cannot be too selective. Even though some of these schools have become quite popular from inclusion in this book, they still accept other than straight A students, because they firmly believe in the learning experience gained from the academic mix of students. This updated version is even more inspiring than the previous. These colleges really do change lives!

As a parent in the grips of high anxiety (I have a high school senior and I high school junior) I highly recommend this book. Although I am a bit concerned that these 40 schools are about to be swamped with applications, I think it will encourage familes to look for their own "schools that change lives." The other book I highly recommend is GETTING IN WITHIUT FREAKING OUT by Arlene Matthews. It is written for anxious, confused parents like me and lays out exactly what to worry about and what NOT to worry about as you and your kids negotiate every step if the school search and application process. The second book is also very reassuring and funny, which I appreciated.

I actually graduated 25 years ago from one of those 40 schools Pope reviewed. Looking back, I do agree that although my college was not a "name brand" college, the education I got was like no other. They were formative years and as Pope says, I was "educated" not "trained".

Looking back to those days at college, I would attribute much good of what I am today to attending that Liberal Arts College. My graduate school, post college, was a Big Ten University. The difference? While the Big Ten U. was very "competitive" based, my experience at the Liberal Arts College mentioned in Pope's book was "collaborative".

Yes, I do agree that we are oversold on "brand-name" schools, and Pope's book would be a good guide to exploring your options. If you are thinking of sending your child to, or if you yourself are considering, college, then this book is a "must read" !!

I first bought this book 1.5 years ago when I was researching colleges for my oldest son. It changed the way I looked at selecting colleges from my prior misconceptions that "bigger is better" (like large state schools) and "it has to have a well-known name to be any good." Pope succeeded in convincing me that not only are there invaluable advantages to smaller-size schools but that there is definitely something to be said for "liberal arts & science" institutions that offer a well-rounded curriculum. I was able to relax then because my son had no idea what he wanted to pursue. As a result of reading the book, my son is now attending Cornell College in Iowa where he is getting a wonderful education in small classes with caring instructors and an administration that "took me by the hand," upon his initial arrival as a freshman, & addressed all my fears and concerns about leaving my son with a bunch of strangers 4 hours away. Because the book includes little quantitative information (%'s of in- vs out-of-staters, tuition costs, % of students who graduate/return sophomore year/go to graduate school, etc.) you will need to supplement this book with another, such as the Fiske guide, to give you a basis of comparison across schools. Even if you don't select any of the schools mentioned, it is worth a read if for nothing else other than a refreshing perspective.

This book is a must for anyone looking at colleges. After reading another Pope book "Looking Beyond the Ivy League...," I was already leaning away from any large colleges. I then read "The Gatekeepers" which was fascinating, but leaves one with the feeling that they should be grateful if a college accepts them.

Colleges That Change Lives reminds us that WE are the customer. WE are choosing the school and we should do it by keeping in mind that our children's education is more important than being able to say our child went to Harvard, Yale, etc. There are schools that welcome our children. Why should we put our children through the stress of applying somewhere they are not likely to get in, where they are not likely to get the close attention most of us need to learn better?

The one thing that stands out in my mind about the highly-selective, well-known schools after reading this book is that we assume the colleges are good (and best for our child) based on the kind of students they accept.

The results are another thing. We, as consumers, assume that if the "best" students get in to those schools, they automatically do well and are assured a successful future. What do we base that on? Assumptions aren't enough.

Read this book.

I have a daughter ready to apply to colleges this fall and have found this book very helpful in planning and sorting through the myriad of information out there.

What I liked: Understanding the administration's vision, including teaching personnel's qualifications and the number of qualified competent undergraduates that each school can turn out is very helpful.

What this book doesn't tell you is the underlying student culture, the nuances of the location and the freshman return rate and other important considerations. So some of these schools sound absolutely too good to be true, but when you additionally use other resources to learn about the school's geographic location, what students say about their school, etc., you get a better picture of the college in it's entirety.

I commend the author who is investigating each college to discover the best intellectual powerhouses out there. In the end, it's the applying senior from high school that has to figure out which college or university is going to provide the best supportive and enriching environment in which to truly learn and grow!

Definitely get this book but do not use it solely to make your decision to attend a particular college named in this book.

What a refreshing change from all those other college guides! This book neither gushes over the ultra-Ivies, nor chuckles at the party-hearty habits of the big universities; instead, it offers hope to the average student, the learning disabled, and the late-blooming adolescent. It focuses on pointing readers in the direction of colleges that make a difference in the lives of young men and women, and in the community at large. A chapter in the beginning, entitled "Today's Learning Disabled Will Be Tomorrow's Gifted", while perhaps slightly over-optimistic, nevertheless opened my eyes to so many possibilities for my son. If you are a hopeful idealist, looking to do something that matters in your life, or looking to guide your underacheiving or learning challenged child, and you're looking for a college that cares about its students and truly wants to admit the students who apply, do as I did and buy or borrow this book today.

I might agree that the "Ivies" are over-rated but this book just gushes on and on about how wonderful these 40 schools are. All of them are perfect and idyllic and everyone who ever went to any of them is a wonderful success and had wonderful and life changing experience at the school.

Somehow, I have to think the real world is a little less rosy than the picture this book paints. If you read one of the school descriptions you've pretty much covered them all as only the names and the adjectives for "wonderful" and "idyllic" change. Basically, it reads as though these 40 schools got together and decided to save money by publishing one sales brochure that includes all of them.

Check this one out from the library, read the first couple of chapters, skim through the descriptions for a few schools and write down the school names from the table of contents. Now get online and see if you can actually learn something about the school aside from the "fact" that it's idyllic and wonderful.

PS. I'm not knocking the schools, just the book. A little less sales and a little more info would have been nice.

I enjoyed the book a lot, especially its focusing on a small number of not-often-discussed colleges. Well-written and thoughtful throughout, the book would be of use to students with not-at-that perfect records, who are looking for a good alternative to some of the very hard to get into "elite" schools. A good "sister book" for students considering colleges, which I also quite liked, was Professors' Guide to Getting Good Grades in College, by Lynn Jacobs and Jeremy Hyman. They tell, from the professors' point-of-view what students already in college can do to get A's. A useful thing, too.