The College Solution: A Guide

<p>What conclusions do you find to be incorrect?</p>

<p>I will give you a couple of examples:</p>

<p>Her description of the research of Thomas J. Espenshade is amateurish and misleading. She never mentions the limitations of the methology nor the (well-warranted) criticisms. She is also rather confused about the author and the scope of his research. He is either an economist studying 10 schools or a sociologist studying 8 schools. At least, she got Princeton right!</p>

<p>She criticizes the USNews Report and praises the availability of a document “most schools fill and paste on their website.” She never bothers to recognize that without the USNews and other publishers, we would never have had the Common Data Set. For all I know, she learned about the CDS by reading this forum! </p>

<p>She does not hesitate to recommend the Forbes rankings, and calls the work of Richard Vedder “not perfect” but fails to discuss the glaring limitations of the rankings that make them highly questionable. She just thinks they must be great, but fails to clearly show why. </p>

<p>And, more importantly than anything, should we not expect from an author who supposedly research college admissions and professes to provide insightful suggestions to increase one’s chances at admission to mention … early college admissions? Even “en passant.” </p>

<p>Obviously, in that hodgepodge of a book, there is a share of correct information. Some seemingly borrowed from sources including this site. Not all of it is bad, but the end results remains substandard compared to other books, especially books written by people with experience in college admissions. </p>

<p>In this field. there are amateurs and experts. There are the self-made gurus a la Bisonnette and Ferguson and there are real authors who know what they talk about. This book is clearly not written by an insider in admission nor someone who has more than a superficial knowledge of the subject she covers. Its appeal, again, might only be for the people who have no understanding of the issues but are satisfied to know very little.</p>

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<p>Can you list some? I bet it would help a lot of people out. :)</p>