<p>Speaking of the PR guide, I do think that it does a pretty solid job of taking the social/cultural pulse of schools. Which makes sense; social life is the one area where the typical student has experienced a number of different schools first-hand (college students party at other schools all the time, but they usually don't interact with professors or administrators). So since most of the kids have a good sense of where their school stands relative to others, even PR's non-random sample of kids will get you an accurate snapshot of a measure like Reefer Madness or Clove Smoking Vegetarians (in other words, it's likely you'd get the same answer no matter who you asked at the school, which is not true of questions about academics or even food). If a school's on PR's top ten party list, or any other cultural top/bottom ten, I take that very seriously. (Unlike the other rankings in the PR book.)</p>
<p>I like Pope's Colleges that change lives. Pretty much because I believe choosing a college should be about a good fit between a student and the culture of the school, its academics, student politics and everything else. That's why a lot of the schools that I ended up looking at were from that guidebook...Wooster, Denison, Ohio Wesleyan, Kalamazoo and Reed. Visiting them has made me believe even stronger that they can provide a better education than the Ivies if rankings and emphasis on who scored what is replaced by a more wholistic emphasis on liberal arts and civic participation. But that's just me.</p>