Customer Reviews

The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, 2009: Students on Campus Tell You What You Really Want to Know, 35th Edition (Insiders' Guide to the Colleges: ... Campus Tell You What You Really Want to Know)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I know this must sound backwards, but I find this to be a good book for my teenager who is just starting to explore the issue of college choice because SO LITTLE is written about each college. You can sit down and read a student-centric overview of what each college "feels like" in a page or two without getting overwhelmed. And they nailed the description of my alma mater -- but I don't know if that's a good thing or not! So, this is a good book to *start* with.

What really sets this book apart from other college guides is that it goes beyond the standard statistics of SAT scores, majors and graduate programs offered, numbers of students and professors, etc., and looks at many other aspects of the college experience that are very important to choosing the right college and being happy there: setting, social life and atmosphere, non-academic offerings, relative strengths of the departments, special programs, and so on. For example, one great difference is that the students themselves reveal what they see as their university's strengths and weaknesses, and which departments are best and worst - which is obviously great information to have if you`ve already got a good idea of what you want to study. It's a more integral and human look at the colleges, beyond the veneer of brochures and the cold numbers of the majority of college guides, although they are important too because they provide a lot of hard facts, some of which you may not get in the Insider's Guide. To me, the Insider's Guide is a fantastic supplemental guide that helps you to think about a whole series of aspects of college life that are very important to making the right choice and being happy those four years - which is also important to doing well academically. I know it helped me to broaden my perspective on which college would be right for me when I was applying to university.

This book really gives an insiders look at colleges instead of the usual PR that you read in standard college books. You get to know what are the real issues and advantages that students see in each college along with what there is to do, how is the food and the dorms.

Excellent way to learn about each college's generally tone & atmosphere! Just as it was 30 years ago when I went to college. Although each college's entry may not be re-written each year, the entries appear to be up-to-date, generally speaking.

I ordered this book online to save money and waited anxiously for it to arrive. When it did, I felt a small sense of disappointment.

While the book is interesting in that it examines the various campuses (and believe me, it examines many of them) from a perspective that few other guides provide, something about it didn't seem right. Some of the details were inaccurate and outdated, and I found it hard to believe that it had been recently updated. Furthermore, the numerous typos and other errors (one breakdown of a student population was given as 50% female and 60% male--explain that one!) made me wonder what had become of the book's editor. I think Harvard students would be amused by the mistakes made by their Yalie rivals.

This is a nice student review of colleges. My husband and daughter are not so impressed with it. Both of them like the Princeton Review better because of the academic ratings and some other technical info. I find this a nice filler to those things with some personal insight to the schools.