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Welcome to the AdmissionsConsultants book review
site, brought to you in association with Amazon.com.
We use this space to summarize and review what we think
are the most useful available books on SAT preparation
and college selection. Countless books have been written
on these topics. While our review is not 100% comprehensive,
we have identified several outstanding publications, based on our collective
experience with college
selection and test prep and on feedback from our
clients. We hope you find these reviews useful.
We have reviewed books related to the
following subjects:
The Fiske
Guide to Colleges 2008
by Edward B. Fiske
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USA Today calls this book the "most reliable
and informative" of all college guides. We agree. Over
300 school profiles are included in this guide, along
with vital information on majors, academic and social
climates, and much more. Another strength of this
title is that this
guide is rigorously updated with each annual edition.
Rugg's Recommendations on the
Colleges (25th Edition) by
Frederick E. Rugg
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We are particularly fond of this book
because it provides a comprehensive review of universities
and colleges based on majors, size, and geographic region.
Even a college applicant who has already narrowed
his or her college search to a particular focus
is likely to have their eyes opened to possibilities
they may otherwise have overlooked, thanks to this book. This guide is very useful
both for
its thorough research and for its inclusion of smaller regional
schools which excel in a particular field but do not
get the same publicity that the more prestigious national
schools do.
The Insider's Guide to the
Colleges: 2008 by
the Staff of the Yale Daily News
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This book is a bit more "cutting edge"
than
Rugg's book but we believe it covers many topics that are
of interest and importance to college applicants. It covers
over
300 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada. Information pertaining to academics, faculty,
housing, food, extracurriculars, dating, and more are
included on each school, along with a (necessarily
subjective) description of
the types of students who attend each institution.
Spying on the College of
Your Choice by
Stephen Oppenheimer
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Amazon.com
Selecting your best-fit college is the
first and most important step you will take in the admission process.
This guide provides the most in-depth analysis of the
widest range of selection criteria we have seen in any guide
on the market.
Colleges that Change Lives
by Loren Pope
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this book from Amazon.com
This book gives an in-depth look at 40 colleges
known for their
highly collaborative learning environments and close-knit
student communities. These 40 colleges are by no means all extremely selective.
We particularly like this
book for high school sophomores and juniors because
it is quite useful for defining pertinent college
selection criteria that can be used
to assess any college or university (not just the 40
profiled here).
America's Best Value Colleges: 2008 Edition
by Robert Franek
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While we have a few slight reservations about the subjectivity
of some of the college students surveyed for this book,
we think it is a useful guide, and recommend it. It
seems that a select few of the 110,000 surveys
purportedly conducted for this book were given
additional weight in the write-ups, in the interest of
making the book livelier. Nonetheless, the school profiles
are very complete and contain information on such
pertinent topics as admissions criteria, deadlines, social life, and even
cafeteria food.
Looking Beyond the Ivy League:
Finding the College That's Right for You
by Loren Pope
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As the title suggests, the author advocates finding
the school that is right for the
individual college applicant, regardless
of the school's prestige or "brand name." The book also
gives valuable insights to avoiding
the pitfalls of the college selection process. The only drawback to this book is that, having been published
in 1996, the numbers it presents are dated. Use this book to learn how to assess colleges, but look to more
recent sources for information on costs, class sizes, etc.
The College Finder by Steven R. Antonoff
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The range and variety of categories that
this book groups schools by are both unusual and informative.
This book can assist the prospective student in identifying schools
of interest, as well as in increasing the number of schools
to be considered. The trade-off for the great breadth
of this book is that it does not give much detail on any
particular criteria set or school. Consequently, it is primarily
a good book for conducting an initial screening of schools
of interest. We encourage readers to do further research
into programs and schools
before completing actual college applications.
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