Customer Reviews

Complete Book of Colleges, 2006 (College Admissions Guides)

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I went through the college search process last year with my oldest (he is now a freshman in college), and I will say that we did a lot of reading up on colleges through search-assisting books, including the 2005 Edition of the Princeton Review's "Complete Book of Colleges".

I saw the new 2006 edition at my local library and I could't resist picking it up. Call me either addicted or planning ahead (I've got one more to get through the college seach process in 2 years). "Complete Book of Colleges" (1,434 pages) is, in all but details, pretty much the same as the 2005 edition, not that it's a bad thing or it matters, as most readers will likely be new to the college search process, or restarting it after a few years off. The best thing about this book that it does offer a pretty good overview of the almost 1,800 colleges profiled in here. All of those colleges are profiled alphabetically, which makes it a bit less user-friendly. The fact is that the majority of kids look to colleges in their home-state, so why not have the colleges grouped by state? (There is, to be fair, an index in the back of colleges by state, among other indexes, such as size, environment, cost, and selectivity.)

The biggest flaw in this book is that for some inexplicable reason there are a good number colleges profiled that lack information on tuition cost. How can that be? If the presumed defense of the writers is "well, the colleges didn't give us the information", there surely must be other ways to get it. Pretend to be an interested HS senior or something. All that said, this book is really an essential starting point for anyone in the college search process. But by no means should it be the end point. There are other sources out there, some serious, others irreverent, that will complement this book.