Customer Reviews

The Smart Girl's Guide to College: A Serious Book Written by Women in College to Help You Make the Perfect College Choice

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book gave me a clear picture of different college environments. It doesn't really endorse any particular school, so you get an unbiased, gut-wrenchingly honest and uninhibited view. It dispelled a lot of stereotypes and helped me realize what I was looking for in a school. Truly, if you buy this book, you must be smart.

This book does not give you the data that most other college guides give you. But, it fleshes out the implication of your choices much better than most guides. Let's face it, the college experience can't be translated into just numbers, student ratings, and occasional student sound bites alone. Looking at the numbers alone, one could easily select the best college on paper, and end up being miserable because the qualitative fit of was completely wrong. This guide will help you big time reducing the chance of you making such a "qualitative fit" error.

I have studied over ten college guides. This one is rather unique. It is focused strictly on the women's experience from a qualitative standpoint. It conveys its information through narrative essays written firsthand by the women attending specific colleges. These essays are typically focused on a single issue relevant to students and even more so to women.

These essays are presented in pairs describing in detail various dimensions of the college selection process. For instance, there are two essays covering the small liberal arts college vs. large state university decision. This is a pretty crucial decision to make. To help you out make that decision, one woman writes an excellent essay of what it is like attending Whitman (excellent liberal arts college in the Northwest). Another woman writes an equally excellent essay about the very large state university, U of Kentucky. At no point, do these young authors make any comparison between the two. They just describe thoroughly their first hand experiences, and all analyze in a balanced way the pros and cons of their respective college selection decision.

The editor, Cristina Page, chooses well a series of decision axis; including not only small liberal arts college vs. large state university, but also:

Urban vs. Rural;
Far from vs. Close to home;
Coed dorms vs. single gender dorms;
Liberal vs. Conservative; and
Greeks vs. Independents.

In each case, a pair of essays dedicated to each opposite point fully describes what is the implication of selecting such a college on your college experience.

Cristina Page makes this wise recommendation that you certainly do not need to read the whole book. But, you can read selectively among the choices you have in mind. Thus, if you are interested in attending a large state university, live in a coed dorm, and be on a campus that has a liberal leaning, you can choose the essays that describe each of your choice aspects in details. Read this way, this guide is really a pretty great college selection guide.

A valuable small section of the book focuses on some of the key questions to ask. These include very interesting questions regarding the politics, vision, experience, and capability of the current President of the school. It includes similar questions regarding the Faculty. The editor also mentions key questions about safety issues, crime record, and health facilities. These questions are often original, and not so often mentioned in other college guides. Nevertheless, they are very important, and will help you out in making a better college selection decision.

I received this book as a Christmas gift,and the purchaser advised she had some difficulty finding it on shelves in her local bookstores. I am so-o-oglad she did. This guide allowed me tovisit with young women who made the adjustments I anticipate making. Theirchoices will strengthen my resolve whenthe time comes. I feel more prepared now for the college interview procedure,and the decision-making process. Thankyou Ms. Page and contributors.

As a mother preparing to send her daughter to her home away from home,college, I acquired insights fromthis book that will assist our search.It allowed me to share various experiences with college women in their environments. A must buy.

This is a wonderful resource for girls and their families in applying to college. It's made up of thoughtful and articulate essays by young women in college themselves, and is the best book I've found for focusing the frenzied mind on the sorts of questions that will determine whether a college is a good fit. Urban or rural, large or small, coed or womens, traditionally black college or not, attitudes toward lesbians -- a broad and inclusive set of parameters for thinking about college choice. The essays are surprisingly comprehensive and objective, not at all one-sided. This is a great book, worth searching for even if not in print!

I'll start this review off by qualifying it: it's true that the essays in this book heavily favor small, selective liberal arts colleges, especially women's colleges. The editor went to Goucher, after all, and it's fairly clear that she believes the education she received there could be beneficial for the smart girls the book is aimed at. If you're looking to go to a large university, this book is not going to affirm your decision.

That being said, this is probably the college guide I've gotten the most use out of. Though it's dated, and I had to purchase it used, and it offers few statistics, this book offers the personal responses of its writers to their college environments. This kind of retrospective on college life is tremendously valuable- not merely sound bites, but candid pieces articulating the benefits and costs of schools far from and near to home, large universities and small liberal arts colleges, and coed and single-sex schools.

As a rising senior who expects to find herself at a women's college in the coming years, this book has offered me a glimpse into the life that may be waiting for me. This enjoyable, diverse collection of essays has been one factor that has helped me discover the kind of college I will be comfortable attending.

As a parent of a teenage daughter preparing for what already seems like an extraordinarily confusing search for the right college, this book has provided insights that we could bothunderstand and talk about. It is unlike any of the other guides. Highly recommended.

As the previous reviewers have mentioned, this book is a great stop on the road to choosing a college. As one fully immersed in the college search, and the owner a shelf full of "the right college for you" books, this has been one of the most helpful books I picked up. It poses questions that I would have never thought to ask and aided me in some important decisions. What has not been mentioned is how good the stories included in the book were. I actually ended up reading the book from start to finish, the writings were that entertaining. Highly recommended for all college-bound!

I just picked up this book in the book store and started to read it, now I realize that that was one of the best decisions I have ever made. This book tells everything that you need to know about girls in college, getting into college, and what its like. I highly reccomend this book to parents and students alike.

I find that this was really helpful and also extremely cool since it was all girls in college writing about what different colleges were really like for them.