Editions of the Fiske's Guide to Colleges

College Search & Selection
1

<p>hello people!</p>

<p>Im currently a senior and I've heard lots of good things about the Fiske's Guide to Colleges.</p>

<p>I can get my hands on the 2013 edition fairly easily, but it'll take like a month for me to get the 2014 edition. I don't want to wait because I want to make a final list of colleges as soon as possible.</p>

<p>Is there a major difference between subsequent editions of the Fiske Guide? Will it really make a difference if I get the 2013 edition? </p>

<p>Any help would be much appreciated, thank you!</p>

2

<p>no there isn’t any major difference :slight_smile: (except for the cover art etc)</p>

3

<p>What changes every year is the info on costs (tuition, room and board). So use the older edition but don’t rely on it for accurate costs. Once you have selected schools, go to the schools’ websites to get those.
There are also slight changes each year in things like selectivity, yield etc., but the changes are usually minor and shouldn’t affect you at this stage of your search. You can always use a good college search engine to gather the statistical data -
[College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/]College”>College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics)</p>

<p>The main reason to use Fiske is for the descriptive information on each school and for that the 2013 version is just fine.</p>

4

<p>Fiske is a complete joke that rehashes stereotypes that are very outdated. For Vanderbilt, it says “traditionally a preferred choice for the residents of the Deep South suburbs of Atlanta and Birmingham”.</p>

<p>Vanderbilt draws heavily across the country –New York and New Jersey combined matriculate at greater numbers than Georgia and Alabama combined. </p>

<p><a href=“http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/images/Undergrad_Enrollment_Map_2012.JPG[/url]”>http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/images/Undergrad_Enrollment_Map_2012.JPG&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The Insider Guide to Colleges is a far more accurate guidebook.</p>

5

<p>Unlike timetodecide, I think very highly of Fiske. We have used it for 2 college searches, and have found very few inaccuracies (and we have visited 40 colleges between two kids). You will be fine with the 2013 edition, just get it and start sticking post-its on the colleges you are interested in. :slight_smile: </p>

<p>Can’t say we visited Vanderbilt (although I believe exactly one kid from our northern high school applied there in the past few years, it DOES draw much more heavily from the South than anywhere else). I am guessing by percentage of residents attending college from a state, Vanderbilt still is bigger in the Southern states (there just aren’t as many seniors going to college in Alabama and Georgia as there are in NY and NJ).</p>

6

<p>Vanderbilt is a great school that attracts people from all over, yes. But they definitely have way more southerners who want a great education but don’t want to leave the south, rather than going to NE schools like Ivies and such. So I wouldn’t say it’s inaccurate in stating it’s heavily a southern school. My guidance counselor had Fiske, and even though I had already decided on schools, I leafed through it and found it to be very accurate from what I’ve seen</p>

7

<p>The majority of students at Vanderbilt are not from the south. When I read the Fiske guide, it made Vanderbilt sound like some highly regional southern school and I almost crossed it off my list. When I actually visited, I realized the Fiske guide was just complete garbage and the person who wrote about the school obviously never stepped foot on campus (or maybe he wrote about the school a very long time ago and his image of the school is now flawed).</p>

8

<p>

He was saying that Vandy is preferred to Emory or Duke in those areas, not that everyone at the university comes from those suburbs. Vandy is indeed more attractive than Emory or Duke to many of those living in the Deep South. </p>

<p>Comparing Duke and Vandy, Vandy draws 10 times as many students from Tennessee as Duke, 6 times as many students from Alabama, 5.4 times as many from Louisiana, 2.7 times as many students from Mississippi, and 1.6 times as many from Georgia. Duke draws more students than Vandy from NC (6.5 times as many), Virginia (2.4 times as many), SC (1.5 times as many), and Florida (1.3 times as many). </p>

<p>If you read the rest of the blurb on Vandy, it also says this:

</p>

<p>Of course, getting that far in the description requires reading past the first line of the entry.</p>

9

<p>I found Fiske to be very accurate for schools I was very familiar with. That doesn’t mean I accepted every word as the gospel truth. I made sure to read other reviews of schools on our potential list in Princeton Review and a few other descriptive guides available through the public library (or by sitting in a comfy chair for awhile at the local Barnes and Noble).</p>

10

<p>Vanderbilt students, on average, tend to dress up for games, just like many other Southern schools. Trust me, I’ve watched some of their games, and much of the student section is in sundresses and pearls, or coats and ties.</p>