<p>I used
collegeboard.com - for stats
wikipedia.com - for history or scandals
students review - students write reviews of colleges
collegedirt - polls on differant aspects
college confidential - duh!
and the school website</p>
<p>Any other good sources?</p>
<p>Facebook. The groups "-insert school name here- Class of 2011/2012" have a lot of great discussions that can give you a better feel for the students at the school, and they usually talk about why they're going there. There are also usually nice pictures of the campus.</p>
<p>Colleges that Change Lives:
ctcl.com</p>
<p>Well, it depends on what you're looking for.</p>
<p>Take students review with a grain of salt; it can be useful, but don't let it discourage you. There's plenty of bias on that website, voluntary response bias being one (the people who really have stuff to say about it are more likely to respond, so you might get more really negative comments and more very positive comments rather than a broad range). And you don't even have to have gone to the school to post. That's why I stopped using it; it isn't trustworty. I use <a href="http://www.vault.com%5B/url%5D">www.vault.com</a> instead for college undergrad comments. I think that's a bit more legitimate.</p>
<p>Here are some of the sites/books I used in my college admissions process:</p>
<p>For thinking about why you even want to go in the first place:
- The Complete Idiot's Guide to College Planning
- Looking Beyond the Ivy League by Loren Pope
- Colleges</a> That Change Lives
- College</a> Search - SAT Registration - College Admissions - Scholarships</p>
<p>On selecting colleges
- collegeconfidential
- princetonreview.com
- school websites
- <a href="http://www.vault.com%5B/url%5D">www.vault.com</a>
- Cool Colleges by Donald Asher
- Colleges that Change Lives by Loren Pope
- Students' Guide to Colleges (great book!)
- Insider's Guide to Colleges (I glanced through this, it was okay)</p>
<p>On applying well:
- The New Rules of College Admissions
- How to Get Into Any College by Tanabe
- A is for Admission
- Acing the College Application (helped me a lot)</p>
<p>There are a lot more books/sites that I consulted a little, but I didn't include them. And I'm sure that there are tons of great books that I haven't mentioned.</p>
<p>Here are some articles that give more perspective on college admissions and can help you calm down:</p>
<ul>
<li>Don't Worry, Be Students - New York Times, September 30,2007</li>
<li>What Makes a College Good? - Atlantic Monthly, November 2003</li>
<li>Slate College Week articles, 2005</li>
<li>Liberal Education on the Ropes - The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2005</li>
<li>Crying in the Kitchen Over Princeton (excellent interview)</li>
<li>Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor - Atlantic Monthy, September 2001</li>
</ul>
<p>Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor is a wonderful article and a great breath of fresh air. Here's an excerpt:</p>
<p>"Of course, connections aren't going to help when it comes time to apply to those supercompetitive law and business schools, at which point one will be up against not only straight-A students from Yale and Amherst but also ferociously smart applicants from 'sub-elite' universities that are nonetheless home to supercompetitive graduate-level programs (for instance, the University of Michigan...). And winning a clerkship on the Court of Appeals or an offer from Goldman Sachs is going to depend on having done extremely well in law or business school--not on where you spent your undergraduate years. And, of course, whether or not you make partner at a tony law firm or investment bank will depend on steller performance for seven years at those places. That's how the world really works in 2001."</p>
<p>Brilliant.</p>
<p>Princeton Review's "Counselor-o-matic." Also, their write-ups of colleges (although some of them haven't been updated in YEARS).</p>