Fairview High School
Post Grad Center
(revised 12/1/2007)
If
you are about to help your student embark on a search for colleges to which
they might apply, you are probably wondering where to start. There
are dozens of publications that rank and/or describe colleges.
Here are a few tips to help you get started.
q Each guide has a different
perspective. For example, one may be from the point of
view of alumni and have a positive slant for every write-up. Another
may be from the point of view of an educational institute and promote certain
core values and curricula.
q To get an idea of which
guides are likely to be the most helpful to you, read the introductions plus a
couple of essays from each of several different books. Compare
and contrast the types of information provided, and note the tone and
perspective of each.
q Take advantage of the
collection of guides at the Fairview Post-Grad Center. You
may check out a guide overnight or peruse several guides during a brief visit
to the Center. This is an excellent chance to try
before you buy. Guides are also readily available by
ordering them through your local bookstore.
q Be cautious in relying on
college rankings such as the ones by U.S. News and World Report, Princeton
Review and Newsweek. There are so many good
colleges, and there are many excellent matches for any given student, but many
fine colleges do not show up in the “top 100” sorts of rankings. You can, however, use the rankings lists to get some names
of colleges on which to do more research.
q Know that some of the guides
that rank colleges accept payment from colleges that want to be included in the
guides. Another difficulty is that these guides often
do not have an objective set of criteria for ranking the colleges.
q Be cautious in relying on
estimated college costs, especially when they are shown as a range. Check another source, such as the Kiplinger.com web site,
to get another estimate.
Some
of the guides that are most recommended at Fairview are as follows. Click on the title for a brief description of the guide.
Fiske Guide to Getting into the
Right College
100 Colleges Where Average Students Can Excel (Discover the schools that can
turn average students into eager students.)
The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges (Students on Campus Tell You What You Really Want to Know)
Greene’s Guides to Educational Planning: Making It Into a Top College (10 Steps to Gaining Admission to Selective Colleges and Universities)
Greene’s Guides to Educational Planning:
Inside the Top Colleges (Realities of Life and Learning in America’s Elite Colleges)
The College Finder - Choosing the School That’s
Right for You (More Than 1,000 Colleges Covered)
ISI’s Choosing the Right
College – The Whole Truth About America’s Top Schools
The staff of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) produces this publication. ISI supports efforts to strengthen liberal arts curricula at colleges and universities, and the book criticizes many highly selective schools for political correctness and failure to maintain standards. The guide includes:
q In-depth essays on 125 elite
institutions and lesser-known schools with outstanding programs.
q Reports on campus politics
and intellectual diversity
q Advice on which departments,
professors and courses to seek out.
q Guidance on how to build
your own core curriculum at each school.
q Inside information on campus
life.
q How to ask the right
questions during campus visits.
q Vital statistics for each
college, including number of students, costs, percentage of applicants who are
accepted, and the percentage of students who graduate in 4 years and in 6
years.
Edward
B. Fiske, the former Education Editor of The New York Times, writes this
guide along with Robert Logue and the Fiske Guide to Colleges staff. The guide features:
q Essays on approximately 300
colleges and universities.
Information has been supplied via questionnaires filled out by the institutions and by students. Questions for students covered topics ranging from the accessibility of professors and the quality of housing and dining facilities to the type of nightlife and weekend entertainment available. At the beginning of each write-up are basic statistics about the institution.
q Best Buys
The Best Buy graphic next to a college name denotes institutions that offer remarkable educational opportunities at a relatively modest cost. Use caution in relying on the Best Buy designations. Costs are shown as a range, indicated by from one to four dollar signs for private & for public schools, with a key at the front of the book. The estimated costs do not always seem to match up well with costs as shown at the Kiplinger.com web site.
Edward
B. Fiske and Bruce G. Hammond write this pragmatic
and readable guide to the universe of colleges. It
features sections on:
q How to choose the right
college for you
q Secrets from admissions
officers: how do they really rank applicants?
q How to write winning essays
q How to get off a waiting
list and get accepted
q Financial aid information
and timelines
q How to get the most
financial aid
q How to use the Internet to
get into college
q Strategies for applying and
interviewing
The
John Templeton Foundation edits this publication. This
book includes many small-to-medium enrollment colleges and at least one that
enrolls 25,000 students. It includes:
q Part I – Exemplary Programs
405 college programs in 10 categories designed to encourage character development in higher education.
q Part II – Presidential
Leadership
50 college and university presidents who dedicate their time, talent and resources to character development as an essential aspect of the undergraduate experience.
q Part III – The Templeton
Honor Roll
100 colleges and universities that exhibit a strong campus-wide ethos that articulates the expectation of personal and civic responsibility in all dimensions of college life.
The
College Division Staff of Barron’s Educational Series, Inc. edits this guide. Recent graduates have written the descriptions of campus
environments and students’ life.
q Profiles
The third edition has essays on 65 schools whose
inclusion was based on the standards of Barron’s Selector Ratings in the Profiles
of American Colleges. The selected schools are
denoted as the most academically demanding in the U.S. Most
of the colleges are private, with a small number of public colleges in the mix.
q Most Competitive Comparison
This shows at a glance how each of the competitive schools stacks up against one another in areas such as acceptance numbers and test scores.
q College Summaries
In addition to the detailed essays on each college, there is a short section at the back of the book that provides a thumbnail sketch of each.
Loren
Pope, the director of the College Placement Bureau and author of Looking
Beyond the Ivy League, is the author of this guide. He
cites the importance of considering colleges that have fewer than 5,000
students. The emphasis is on choosing a college that
enables the student to have a close relationship with the teachers, and to be
touched and changed by the experience of attending college. As
he states in the “Lifetime Guarantee” introductory chapter,
“For the 70 years that records have been kept, many
of these 40 (colleges) that welcome “B” and “C” as well as “A” students have
produced higher percentages of scientists and scholars than the prestige
schools that take only a fraction of the “A” students who apply.”
“These schools share two essential elements: a familial sense of communal enterprise that gets students heavily involved in cooperative rather than competitive learning, and a faculty of scholars devoted to helping young people develop their powers, mentors who often become their valued friends.”
The
author, Joe Ann Adler, states “The average student for whom I wrote this book
can identify with one or more of the following criteria: a high school grade
point average of between 2.0 and 2.9 on a scale of 4.0; a class rank between
the 40th and 60th percentile; an SAT I score between 950
and 1050 or comparable ACT score.”
This
book includes:
q Brief essays (usually about
3 pages long) about each of 100 colleges. Most of the
colleges listed have 3,000 or fewer students enrolled. The
colleges are a mix of public and private institutions that are moderately
selective, but judged to offer excellent opportunities.
q A guide to college costs in
the back of the book.
As
the book jacket advertises, “This… reference profiles quality schools renowned
for their innovative teaching styles, unique curricula, small class sizes,
extensive academic services and abundant on-campus housing – all the crucial
factors that help average students succeed.”
The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges – Students on Campus Tell
You What You Really Want to Know
The
staff of the Yale Daily News compiles and edits this guide to selective
colleges. The Insider’s Guide is written “by students,
for students, using the experiences of students”, as described in the Preface. It includes:
q Getting In - Introductory
pages about getting into college and finding funds.
q The College Finder
Lists designed to help you match your interests with a selected group of colleges. There are lists for small, medium and large student enrollments, for low, medium and high acceptance rates, for low, mid-range and high cost tuitions, schools with very high graduation rates and more.
q Essays about specific
colleges, sorted alphabetically within state.
A box of basic information prefaces each essay. It includes number of students, costs, percentage of applicants who are accepted, graduation rate and more. Essays are sprinkled with quotes from students.
Greene’s Guides to Educational Planning: Making It Into a Top College (10 Steps to Gaining Admission to Selective Colleges and Universities)
Howard
Greene, M.A., M.Ed., and Matthew Greene, Ph.D., both of whom are renowned
college placement consultants, wrote this guide. The
guide includes:
q An inside look at how the
admissions process works. This includes clear
definitions of the different admissions methods, such as rolling admissions,
early decision, early action and regular admissions.
q What the top colleges are
looking for.
q Choosing the best college
for you.
q Presenting your
qualifications, work experience and references.
q Making the most of campus
visits.
q Creative financing – taking
advantage of all the options.
Greene’s Guides to Educational
Planning: Inside the Top Colleges (Realities of Life and Learning in America’s Elite Colleges)
This
is one of a series of guides written by the father and son team of Howard
Greene, M.A., M.Ed., and Matthew Greene, Ph.D., renowned college placement
consultants. The top colleges to which the title
refers are 20 elite colleges that are some of the most-frequently-named and
sought-after colleges, such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford and MIT.
A
key theme in the book is reflected in the title of the introduction: Getting
Past the Halo Effect. As the authors state, there is a
false assumption that “admission to an elite school guarantees academic
success, social happiness, access to the top graduate schools, and lifelong
positions of leadership in any chosen endeavor.” That
is the halo effect. The book goes on to talk about
getting past the myths, current campus issues, difficulties in attending an
elite institution, differences in quality of life at the elite schools and how
to find the right match for a student to a college.
Jay
Mathews, one of the country’s best education writers, is the author of this
very readable guide. This guide features:
q The top 100 outstanding (but
under appreciated) colleges
q Insider secrets on writing
essays and getting off the wait list
q The interview process, as
seen through the eyes of an interviewer and alumnus.
q The truth about U.S. News
& World Report and other college rankings
q A personal questionnaire to
determine the right college fit for you (Appendix A)
q Helpful tips for financing a
college education (part of Chapter 6)
Steven
Antonoff is the author of this guide. The following book review (by reviewer Wesley) appears on
the Amazon web site.
“This helpful
guide ranks American colleges and universities on a wide variety of dimensions:
admissions, academics, quality, social, internationalism, careers, athletics,
enrollment, and cost. This information can clearly
help a college-bound student look for an academic setting that will meet
her/his needs. For example, colleges with accessible
faculty (e.g., Rice & Grinnell) would be perfect for students who like
one-on-one attention. On the other hand, some students
might be more interested in the top party schools (e.g., Tulane & Arizona
State). Other lists are just fun, such as
"College Towns with Excellent Pop Music Scenes" (e.g., Seattle &
Austin).
However, one major debit exists; although some lists are clearly
referenced (e.g., U.S. News's Best National Universities), others are
attributed simply to "experts," without explication of the source. For example, the "Top Schools for Chemistry"
doesn't clarify from whom or how the rankings were derived. Whether
the rankings were solicited from college administrators or experts in the field
of chemistry makes a big difference. In other words, I
wouldn't simply rely on these listings to pick a school.
Overall, I'd recommend this book for students looking for the
right college or university. However, it shouldn't be
the primary book they use. Also add a basic college
guide that includes stats about each school.”