This annual guide to more than 330 colleges and universities has been the indispensable source of information for thousands of students, parents and counselors. It offers the perfect blend of statistical academic information and more personal descriptions of the campus cultures and lifestyles of each school. Fully revised and updated, The Fiske Guide to Colleges 2005 includes everything anxious students and their parents want and need to know.
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Edward B. Fiske served for 17 years as education editor of The New York Times, where he realized that college-bound students and their families needed better information on which to base their educational choices. He is the author of the bestselling annual The Fiske Guide to Colleges and The Fiske Guide to Getting into the Right College. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, near the campus of Duke University.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best I've Seen,
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This review is from: Fiske Guide to Colleges 2005 (Paperback)
I think Fiske is the most useful of the college guides. It tells the most about each college's academic strengths, and it explains to parents who may have gone to the school twenty or more years ago how the school has changed. Most of the sidebar statistics are very helpful. Fiske rates academics, social opportunities and overall quality of life on a 1 to 5 scale. A lot of people are looking very closely at freshman retention and graduation rates these days, and Fiske provides those numbers as well.I don't feel Fiske does an adequate enough job with each schools expense. It rates schools on a 1 to 4 dollar sign scale which I feel can be misleading because a school's price tag doesn't often equal the amount a student will have to spend if a school has a lot of financial aid available. There are times when students actually end up with more debt from public schools. Except for finances, I think Fiske is better than Princeton Review in every regard. It does a better job detailing a school's strongest majors and describing which schools overlap the ones you are considering. Princeton Review uses a system where they tell you which schools are "often preferred" to the school you're looking at or which schools are "rarely preferred." That would be interesting if it wasn't so subjective and inconsistent. Compared to Peterson's, Kaplan and Princeton Review, Fiske is the most exclusive as it states it restricts its list to the top 10% of colleges. So on the one hand there are fewer schools to choose from, and on the other you know that the listed institutions are respected enough to get the Fiske seal of approval. (Barron's Guide to the Most Competitive Colleges has even fewer schools, but I feel that book is not very useful in that it offers too few schools and each entry is written by an alumnus of that school.) Fiske does give a fair amount of student opinion and covers subjects such as Greek life, athletics, and general atmosphere quite adequately. While it may skew a bit to the positive, I think this can be an asset as it will help make students excited about college.
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
By far the best I've read,
By me "slightly-college-obsessed junior" (Los Angeles, California, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Fiske Guide to Colleges 2005 (Paperback)
The Fiske Guide is the first college guide I turn to when I want to get a better sense of a particular school (and I own several guide books). There are several pages of text for each school. It paints a fairly clear picture of most schools, and gives a summary at the beginning of each review highlighting the significant facts about the college.Fiske combines the two types of college guides--it both displays the facts (location, enrollment, sat ranges, admit rate etc) and discusses the general atmosphere of each school. In a box on each review are rankings of the schools Academics, Social Life, and over all Quality of life. To facilitate browsing and to expose readers to schools they might not have otherwise considered, at the end of the review for each school are a list of "overlaps"--schools that are similar to the school being discussed. I actually found many schools that I am now strongly considering apply to in the overlaps box. It also provides the dates for various admissions plans (early, regular, transfer etc) for each school as well as the essay question on that school's application. One helpful aspect of Fiske that is absent in many other guides is a list of what majors the college is particularly strong in. As someone who is fairly certain of thier major, I have been really happy that I am provided with that list. Fiske has been accused of viewing all schools through "rosy-tinted glasses" and there definitely is something to that. Princeton Review is more helpful in providing a sense of the student body at school and will say flat out that everyone at a a particular school is snobby and spoiled or that most students never bathe/shave their legs. So, if you seriously considering a particular school I'd look it up on princetonreview.com and click "students say" to get what may be a more critical view of the school. But for basic browsing, I'd go with Fiske.
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wouldn't Counsel without it!,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Fiske Guide to Colleges 2005 (Paperback)
As a high school guidance director/counselor in a college-prep HS, I use and refer students/parents to a variety of sources for information on colleges, especially views on the characteristics, "climate," and culture that they just can't get from data-heavy guide books. Fiske's provides well-written summaries with just the right amount of detail of what life is like on each campus. Entries are updated annually from reports submitted by a wide-range of observers and critics who visit and tour these campuses throughout the year. Fiske's Guide is essential for students who cannot visit on their own and provides a great "reality check" as they start narrowing down their "list."
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