283 Great Colleges

This is a good competitor to the Fiske and Princeton Review guides to colleges. While the experts say Fiske is best (and Fiske is my favorite), I know many students (and probably parents) see the Fiske entries and think "I have to read ALL THAT?" Thus, they go to the much briefer overviews in Princeton Review which probably don't give enough information, but will at least give the gist of what life is like at each institution. The Sparknotes guide is in the middle although it's closer to Princeton Review than Fiske. It's also a bit less openly subjective than Princeton Review which likes to quote students' catchy sound bites. In some instances, the Sparknotes entries say nothing negative, but you will sometimes see things such as "artsy students would be happier at another school than Auburn" or "Some students complain faculty members are too focused on their research" at Texas A & M. This lets the reader know that Sparknotes isn't merely an advertisement for all the various colleges. Furthermore, in this age of increased political polarization, Sparknotes was wise to note if a school is especially conservative or liberal. Sparknotes gives a number of helpful statistics including acceptance rate, graduation rate (4 and 6 year), and endowments (be cautious if you're considering a private school with less than 20 million). It also lists some other aspects such as famous alumni and total annual cost, both items I think are overlooked by the other books. On the other hand, they have SAT "averages" instead of median ranges which is not as helpful. Seeing that Trinity College has an average of 649 CR and 658 M sounds a lot more daunting than the profile in Princeton Review which says their median range is 600-690 CR and 610-690 M. Princeton Review also is more thorough with financial aid statistics and analysis. One thing that separates Sparknotes is a quiz that may help identify which schools will appeal to a student and which won't. The quiz is a bit simplistic and the categories (such as "Big Job" to indicate that a school encourages internships or co-op programs or "Big Perspective" to show that a school emphasizes a well-rounded curriculum) are fairly generalized. I think looking at the schools that the quiz results show a student will like is a smart idea, but I would hesitate to rule out any schools based on such a small set of questions. Sparknotes chose a very good collection of colleges overall, but there are a few such as Centre College, McDaniel, Millsaps, New College of Florida and Gustavus Adolphus that it omitted. I suspect in future additions they may add a few more schools. While Fiske is more informative, and Princeton Review does a better job with financial aid info, the Sparknotes guide is a good compromise as it has slightly more info on the schools than Princeton Review while maintaining the brevity that makes research more appealing to busy students and parents.