For college hopefuls at high schools across the country, this is the season of high anxiety. We are in the heart of the testing season, with many juniors confronting the PSAT and many seniors grappling with the SAT.
Then there’s the scariest test of all: the existential one that involves Making a Decision.
It is time, in other words, to choose a college.
Deciding on a school involves self-evaluation, research and a sizable amount of time–also a chunk of money, given the cost of applications and campus visits.
But most students begin shopping in the same, simple way: They look through college guides, those ubiquitous (in autumn, anyway) soft-cover books that list, rank, describe and otherwise categorize the nation’s colleges.
In a yearly college guide poll of freshmen at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, more than three-quarters of those surveyed said they relied on these handbooks. Of those, almost 90 percent said they used two or three guides.
“They’ll often combine a statistically oriented guide with one that has more anecdotal information,” said Jeff Hanna, executive director of college relations at Wooster. “They use these guides early in the process–to make a list, to make quick comparisons about location, size or majors.”
That is just how the guides should be used, according to the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, which represents 6,400 high school counselors and university admissions people. “The handbooks have a great value in providing factual information,” said Mark Milroy, the group’s chief officer for programs and services. “We don’t endorse any rankings.”
Another popular resource was the World Wide Web. About 47 percent of the students in the Wooster poll said they went to the Internet for help, up from 17 percent last year. Of those, almost 90 percent said the sites’ college information was as least as useful as that in handbooks.
There are scores of college guides out there–some slim and specialized, others thicker than the Manhattan telephone directory. They cost anywhere from $5.95 to $25, though some are available at public libraries and schools.
Following is a brief look at a few of them:
– “The College Handbook” (The College Board, $23.95) is one of the big books–a compendium of academic, demographic and financial facts about schools coast to coast.
One reason for the book’s success may be its useful and somewhat unusual indexes. Readers can look up colleges by “environment”–small and urban or large and suburban, for example. There is also a list of schools that accept applications very late in the year. Historically black colleges are indexed, too, as are schools with services for learning-disabled students. Another good touch: a brief rundown of the early-decision policies at 330 schools that accept students before the yearly rush.
The book’s Web site offers, among other things, sample PSAT questions (www.collegeboard.org).
– “Peterson’s Guide to Four-Year Colleges” (Peterson’s, $24.95) is another comprehensive guide–a wrist-wrenching 3,200 pages to carry around. Aside from describing 2,004 colleges and universities, the book indexes colleges by state, by majors offered and by cost categories from $2,000 a year to $20,000 and more.
A “College Countdown Calendar” lists important testing dates. It also suggests a timetable for racking up those application assets. The book comes with a free compact disk containing sample questions from the SAT and ACT, among other things.
The publisher’s Web site (www.petersons.com) competes a bit with the book; it offers 1,000 school descriptions taken from the guide.
Now for a few of the guides that rank, differentiate or otherwise specialize:
– “America’s Best Colleges” (U.S. News & World Report, $5.95) places 1,400 colleges in “quality tiers” based on academic reputation, selectivity and alumni giving, among other things; new this year is a diversity ranking. Popular as it may be, I found this guide dull and predictable. The descriptions are short, numerical snapshots; the only prose is in the introductory sections.
– “The Fiske Guide to Colleges” (Random House/Times Books, $20) is a readable guide that seems less interested in reputation. It covers 300 schools–175 “selective” colleges, along with others deemed interesting because of their curriculums or locations.
The book includes a good sampling of three kinds of schools it considers to be popular now: engineering colleges, schools with a religious emphasis and colleges on the West Coast or in the Sun Belt, where tuition tends to be cheaper.
– “The 311 Best Colleges” by The Princeton Review (Random House/Times Books, $20) is another good guide, and the most irreverent of the bunch. Along with information provided by college administrators about faculty ratios, admissions and learning-disability programs, it offers ratings and comments by students.
This book has become known for its student rankings of schools in 61 categories: everything from “Party Schools” and “Students Most Nostalgic for George McGovern” to “Best Overall Academic Experience” and “Professors Suck All Life from Materials.”
The offbeat indexes, along with the chattily written descriptions of each school, provide a colorful picture of each campus. The danger is that the picture may be distorted by the particular students who volunteered information. The Web site is www.review.com.
– “The National Review College Guide” (Simon & Schuster, $13) also has a strong personality–in this case, a conservative one. Mixing polemics with avuncular advice, the book points to 58 colleges it considers academically rigorous and entertainingly takes aim at brand-name schools that offer “watered down” or “politically correct” curriculums.
– “The Black Student’s Guide to Colleges” (Madison Books, $19.95) profiles more than 190 colleges, 20 of them historically black. Aside from the usual data on academics, admissions and costs, the book lists the number of black professors at each college and provides some frank descriptions about the realities of social life for black students at mostly white schools.
– “Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools You Should Know About Even if You’re Not a Straight-A Student” by Loren Pope (Penguin, $11.95) suggests some “no-name” colleges that produce, in the author’s words, “a higher proportion of scientists, scholars and people in Who’s Who” than do designer-label colleges.
