Customer Reviews

Fiske Guide to Colleges 2008

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This is officially the last go-around for me as far as far as college searches are concerned. My youngest is entering her HS senior year in a few weeks, and so we are gathering up the latest and the greatest of college search books one more time.

"Fiske Guide to Colleges 2008" (756 pages) is a curious book in my opinion. It lists the "best and most interesting" colleges in the country, about 300 out of 2,200 four year colleges in the US are written up. According to the introduction, they were selected on the basis of academic quality, geographic diversity, a balance of public and private schools, and schools that are currently popular for certain programs (engineering and technical schools, religious emphasis, Sunbelt schools). Being from Ohio, I look at the list of schools that "made the cut" and in my opinion it is incomprehensible that a fine instituion like Xavier University was omitted. While the descriptions give a good flavor of a particular college, there are essentials missing, such as the exact tuition/room/board (there is only a general 1 to 4 star rating on how expensive a college is). Also not helpful in my opinion is that the colleges are presented alphbetically, rather than by state (although there is an index by state).

When my daughter was simply looking to get basic information a good year or so ago, she did not spend a lot of time with the then 2006 version of this book. Now, hoever, as she has narrowed her choices, she is reading up more on her pool of colleges in this book. Bottom line: if you are at the very beginning of your college search, this is not the book to start with. This book is more helpful to get a second (or third) opinion once your child has narrowed down his/her selection of colleges of interest.

The Fiske Guide to Colleges is notorious for not changing its text much from year to year, but it should be known for other things as well.

While at first I used it a great deal in my college search, the Guide's seemingly useful comparisons of schools are only superficial. If you use this guide a lot, you will see what I mean once you do the best thing possible for your college search, VISITING schools. Also, remember that you can get a great education at a lot of places, so the academic ratings are pretty much meaningless, not to mention completely based on the reputation of the schools--that's how you get comments about the teaching at Knox College being "out of this world," while Knox gets only a fairly good academic rating, while the Ivy League schools, full of teaching assistants and impersonal learning galore, all get 5 star academic ratings. (If you don't believe me, read Loren Pope's "Colleges That Change Lives.") Because there are so many quotes in the guide, people assume that it is accurate. However, the quotes are taken completely out of context, and the guide is so positive about every school that you should be cautious of using this guide.

The problem with the Fiske guide--and in many people's eyes, its asset--is its readability and aforementioned positivity. The college portraits tell you little about what college life is actually like at these schools. No college is exactly like what the Fiske Guide portrays it as. The important thing is for you to find out for yourself what kind of college is right for you. I found it through reading "Colleges That Change Lives," which is the only college guide with a real intent to help students--students of all grade point averages, SAT scores, and so forth--find their respective best fits. So while the Fiske Guide may seem useful at first, if you use it, visit the schools and see what I mean.

Fisk and Princeton Review are the two best college guidebooks for getting a feel for what it would be like to go to a college. Fisk seems to have more of an expert's view, as though it were written by a college counselor or perhaps your high school guidance counselor. The Fisk write ups are balanced and the factual information about the college seems to me to be more complete than that of Princeton Review. The Fisk write ups jibe well with my experience at the campuses as I have visited. The strength of the Princeton Review guide is that it is based largely on surveys given to students, and by getting information directly from students, it seems to convey more of an insiders feel for each school. The possible weakness of Princeton Review compared to Fisk is that the surveys don't appear to be very scientific, as the information comes from students who volunteered to be surveyed or submitted comments online. This means means that while the information is useful, it has to be taken with a grain of salt, as it may not be totally representative of the student body as a whole. Overall, I definitely think both guides are very useful and are worth consulting before making an important decision like this.

A really good book, I decided to hold off and instead of buying the 2006 version, I purchased the 2007 version. I don't know if there is a large difference in the information in each one, but I am glad I purchased this one. This book helped me select colleges I wouldn't have even considered or heard of. The information given is thorough and supposedly accurate, but the book gives you a thorough overview of each colleges breakdown from the ratio of males to females to the median SAT and ACT score. Each college has 2-5 pages written about it, of specific information about the nearby towns to the academic challenge and the social aspect of the college. Overall, a great buy for any college bound student.

The Fiske guide doesn't cover all the colleges in the US, only about 300 of the 2200+. However, these 300 are probably the ones most people find interesting. Certainly all the big name schools are here. All of the most selective colleges are included. Fairly recently they have started including schools from England and Canada which offer excellent educations with a foreign hint at a very low price. In fact, the University of Aberdeen (Scotland) (founded in 1495 - talk about tradition) is considered the best value of the colleges.

The Fiske Guide uses an approach somewhat different than the other guides. They admit that their valuing system is somewhat subjective, but how could they be otherwise. They rate the schools in Academics, Social Life and Quality of Life. They send out questionaire to the colleges, some parts of which are to be filled out by students. In addition many of the colleges are visited by the staff.

The book also offers a section on how the student can size himself up to get a better fit for the college. This includes a thirty question survey, followed by a brief description of each of the questions.

This book was a great help in selecting a college. It combined both statistics and opinions of students' to form a wonderful book. This book is well worth the money and is probably the best of its kind. I recommend it over the College Board handbook and over the Insiders Guide to College.

Reading this, you'd think that every student could be happy at every school. What's the downside? Aside from a few mentions of large classes, cold weather and bad food, this book is filled with praise. True, you can learn to read the code: `trying to move away from its reputation as a party school' means `lift another brewski to the home team.' But why not be frank?

Would you buy a TV without checking out Consumer Reports?! With life-changing experiences awaiting your college-bound teen and the ski-high costs of tuition, BUY this guide and consult it repeatedly! Parents and teens can read & re-read at every step: 1)Sorting colleges by characteristics: How selective? Big or small? Close to home or across the country? 2)Planning campus tours. 3)Narrowing the application list. 4)Sorting your acceptances: What are the strongest departments, again? This is all so important -- keep this best-of-its-kind guide in your home library!

The one thing that this book doesn't always have is statistics. However, I found it quite thorough and objective. However, if you already have an older version of this book. As long as it's only a few years older you shouldn't bother buying. Many of the reviews use the exact same "catch-phrases" and descriptions from year to year. Sometimes it's almost verbatim. Besides that, buy it.

Our daughter is in high school, and we've been researching possible college choices for a couple of years now. This is the first time I have read Fiske's guide, and I was very happy with it. The other guide we have relied on heavily is The Best 366 Colleges, 2008 Edition (College Admissions Guides). Taken together, I feel these two books give you the best understanding you're going to get from just reading college guides. At the end of the day, you're still going to need to visit the campuses and talk to people familiar with the schools you're interested in.

But what schools are you, or should you be, interested in? Which schools are a potential "fit" for your future college student? The guides are a great way to narrow your choices from 2200 to a manageable handful. While some reviewers here complain about Fiske's "subjectivity", I found very valuable the subjective judgment of this seasoned observer. Sometimes the Princeton Review guide is too numbers heavy, and many of the comments from students just seem way too anecdotal. With Fiske, I get the feeling that the student comments fit better with the overall impression that the Fiske staff gets from the school.

Where Princeton uses numerical rankings in many categories (academics, quality of life, etc..) I think Fiske's 5-star ratings are more meaningful. It seems to me that it's unrealistic to differentiate between schools on a scale of 1-100. Is a school rated 95 on academics really "better" than the school with a 93? Better for your child? I think it's easier to understand if you're talking about a 4-star school versus a 5-star school. 4-star is well above average, 5-star is elite.

Fiske does include all the essential numbers (SAT & ACT ranges for the middle 50%, enrollment, admissions percentages, etc...). But the narratives in Fiske are more thorough than those in the Princeton Review. There tends to be more detail on the important basics of student life (dorms, cafeterias, classes, professors). Fiske does a very nice job flagging potential problem areas for your child. If a school environment is very liberal (or very conservative), very religious (or anti-faith), hard drinking (or dry), hand-holding (versus sink-or-swim), Fiske identifies that for you so that you can avoid environments that aren't suited to your student. I found especially helpful Fiske's inclusion of a short list of strongest departments or majors at each college. If you're already considering a particular field of study, that is invaluable information.

I highly recommend this guide for families searching for the right place for their future college student among the top schools in the country.