<p>How accurate do you think the critical essay style/insider/whole truth college guides are? I ask because when S and I read them during his search, we found them very helpful and did use them to add or eliminate colleges from his list of schools to research and visit. Mostly we were looking for information about the social makeup of the student body and campus life, more than objective facts like enrollment and SAT ranges. But as I read about some of the same schools this time (using different editions in some cases), I'm finding that my impressions of certain colleges from the guides are very different than what I received a couple of years ago. Also, I read the reports on S's school and felt we might have eliminated it completely had we read those same articles before! Yet he's happy there.</p>
<p>An example of a tidbit from one guide that wasn't included when S and I read them, but that could potentially make a difference now for D:</p>
<p>Yale is known as the gay Ivy and the accompanying slogan is "One in four, maybe more." Really?</p>
<p>Note: We'd never use the guides as a substitute for our own assessments, but realistically you can't visit a million schools and have to narrow the list somehow.</p>
<p>There's some merit in most of them, but bear in mind that you could get ten vastly different perspectives on many schools from any ten different students you interviewed. The goal of the guidebook however, it to develop a concise stereotype to define the campus (e.g. Wesleyan is counter-cultural, Colgate is preppy, Georgetown is conservative, Hopkins is cutthroat, Brandeis is Jewish, etc.). Apparently those stereotypes apply to enough of the campus that they're notably present, but the book doesn't usually detail the experiences of students who don't fit the stereotype. In most cases, there are lots of them, they find plenty of kindred spirits, and they get along just fine with others who are different from themselves. The insights of the guidebooks might generate good reasons for adding a college to your list, but I'd be cautious about using one as a reason to delete colleges from your list.</p>
<p>The guidebook that we found most accurate for our purposes was ISI's <em>Choosing the Right College</em>. We found their assessments tended to be right on the money.</p>
<p>Yale is very gay-friendly and "one in four..." is a popular saying that I believe originated from a New York Times article in the 1980s that tagged Yale as the gay Ivy. Nowhere near one in four students is gay, but there are probably more out students than at lots of campuses, they are very integrated into the social and extracurricular scene, and almost no one thinks twice about their orientation.</p>
<p>I second, the ISI book. However, the problem with all of them is that they tend to get rather stale after three or four years of recycling the same material with different stats.</p>
<p>Far more fun (and revealing in their own special ways) are student-run blogsites, some of the better of which are listed below:</p>
<p>Do any of the guides use the criteria of how "Green" a campus is? D wants to go to a school that walks the walk as well as having good environmental program and science programs. She won't go to a school that isn't trying to make a difference.</p>
<p>I think that PETA and some other organizations rate schools for vegan friendly/outdoorsy/ecoaware....
with the market the way it is for colleges, there is a list someplace for whatever criteria you can dream up.
( like where do the multipierced,mohawked, tattooed Alan Ginsberg readers go? or the outdoorsy types?)</p>
<p>If the town is pretty environmentally concious, chances are the school will be as well, because a cohort of community members/students will demand it.</p>
<p>I know mostly Northwest schools
For instance the UW has just added a new school Welcome</a> to the Program on the Environment Home Page
I would also expect a school like UCSB to be environmentally aware as well, there are even recycling bins in the hotel rooms!</p>
<p>My personal feeling about guidebooks is that they are only initially helpful. The Fiske guide allowed me to look at a bunch of big name LACs and weed out which ones were worth visiting and which were not. Beyond that, I found a lot of the material in Fiske to be very one-sided (which is to be expected when the book's name is eponymous to its author). For example, I read about Vassar and thought 'well, this is great!', visited and for reasons I can't really articulate, abhorred the place. I read about Bard, thought 'what a waste of time', visited because my mom insisted and though was not really intent on attending, ended up applying. I felt that Fiske's descriptions were a little too cute (I think he called Bard "Non-Conformity Central-on-Hudson") which didn't feel accurate to my personal experience of the school. If I had written the book, of course, and it were called C******'s Guide to Colleges, and Fiske were my reader, he would be posting the exact opposite on College Confidential about his experience of Bard vs. my description.</p>
<p>For bare bones info, there are a plethora of books that are stat collections (the CB has one). Those books have stats, info about religious affiliation, etc. All this stuff can be found online... I think, besides the fact that post visiting it did little for me, Fiske was a waste of money because for the amount of time I needed a book like that, I could have gotten it from the library.</p>
<p>In the end I chose Bryn Mawr over Harvard and Wellesley, despite Fiske's more favorable descriptions (and public knowledge) of the latter two. While a lot of CCers and many others have and will question my choice, my response is always: I did what felt right for me. Those who know me well know I made the right choice; the 'feel factor' and ability to give personally tailored advice/reassurance are things no book or website can give you. There is always going to be an element of college application that is the unknown variable. One can only hope that he or she will be admitted to and choose a school where he or she can flourish. It's a crapshoot, to the same extent, if not more, than the admissions process itself. </p>
<p>This post was a long-winded way of saying that I think there IS use for books like Fiske's, but they are generally of limited utility.</p>
<p>You will probably also find that the data are a couple of years behind reality, because of delays in publishing and so on. Like, admissions statistics, costs, all the stuff that you are really interested in, of course!</p>
<p>Prior to D1, our family (and I mean our entire extended family) had no history of "choosing" colleges. Since my D didn't want to follow in the family tradition of attending the state flagship, I needed information and fast. I read every book on the topic I could find or purchase, and what I learned was incredibly helpful. BUT it was a small statistic here, a tiny fact there, a tidbit, an observation, etc. that created a mosaic for each school. Yes I'd do it all again if necessary, but for all the reasons prior posters have stated I can't recommend it as a method.</p>
<p>Re: Green colleges - I saw Harvard in the top 10 and I can attest from working there that it is far from green - they may have a few green buildings but there is little attention paid any where else - another reason why some of the guides are untrustworthy</p>
<p>In my experience, those kinds of college guides weren't that helpful. Like some have said, opinions vary widely among different people, and can sometimes paint a distorted picture of some colleges. The essays probably still have an element of truth, but they are not reliable for determining which schools to eliminate from your list. On the other hand, if you're looking for potential schools to add to your list, this might be a good place to start.</p>