The Best 345 Colleges, 2003 Edition

This book is very good for info, stats, etc on colleges. But what I never really thought about, and it's needed before making this huge decision, is what college education is really all about in the USA. This is huge. You have to know this. I searched, and was told that the best book to read for that is Norman Thomas Remick's "West Point: Character Leadership Education...". Itwas great. Then I went on with my search for a college in "The Best 345 Colleges" by Robert Franek, armed with greater understanding of what it's all about. I recommend everyone doing the same.

I bought this book in the end of my junior year of high school. With this book I was able to learn about all the colleges that my high school counselor or anybody else recommended, and I could get a comprehensive view of the school. With this book, I could learn about things beyond academia. When it came to my finaly decision to apply to schools, there were some schools that I found by just browsing through the book that I applied to. Which was helpful, because I could look further than the schools my counselor liked sending students to. Four out of the eight schools I applied to, came from browsing the book. Note: I made further inquiries about prospective schools, but this book was where I discovered the the prospective schools.

Our high school senior delegated research into prospective colleges to me, a major act of trust on her part. Or perhaps she assumes that my 30-year-old college experiences offer greater insights into the mysterious, frightening future she is set to enter. (Like I said, trust...) In any case, this book offers both the college's party line plus reports from opinionated students who have chosen to submit input. Self-selected reports from a small number of college students cannot truly represent the entire student body's opinions, just as admissions personnel will never offer negative views of their college, so keep this in mind while reading any of these college review books. Still, this is one of the better books of this genre out there as long as you can tolerate failing to find many excellent colleges featured. To keep it all in perspective, they say a student's success is based less on their choice of college, and more on what they do while there. Let's just pray our prospective college students make the most of their opportunities!