<p>She has read through the MacLean's guide to Canadian universities (she is a dual US/Canadian citizen) and found it very useful. I'd like to give her the equivalent for the US so we can plan a spring break road tour. She's quite bright and very inquisitive and is doing well at a very competitive private high school. I don't think she wants or would do well in a pressured environment (like most/all Ivies), but will benefit from a challenge.</p>
<p>I know personally, I used Princeton Review a lot along with the Fiske’s Guide and…my favorite College Pr0wler. The 0 is supposed to be an o…but they censor it on this site for some reason. Anyway, they publish guides to colleges with student quotes and a “report card” which can easily be compared to other schools. Beware, some of them are out of date! But most of the time they’re pretty helpful. They publish books but now you can access all of their books online at their website for free.</p>
<p>Don’t buy the book… the rankings can be easily accessed online and a quick glance through the magazine at the bookstore pretty much gives you all the information you need to know from it.</p>
<p>I’m more of an online person, but I used The Princeton Review’s website. They have a “counselor-o-matic” / best fit search. You put in your information and your qualities for a college (it varies from narrow to broad, so if you are not sure…), and then it spits out a list of schools that match you. It ranks them by reach, match, and safety (obviously, though, be careful with this). I thought it was a very helpful place to start. After you have a smaller list of colleges, I like <a href=“http://www”>www</a>. u n i g o .com. It has reviews, posted documents, movies, pictures, and rankings given by the students of each university.</p>
<p>Thanks for the help. Virtually everyone likes Princeton Review except for noimagination. What about it didn’t you like, noimagination? </p>
<p>From the Amazon description, PR and Fiske would seem to be relatively redundant. But, apparently not. The Insider’s Guide might come a little later in the search as, I’d guess, do 40 Colleges and Non-Ivies.</p>
<p>My daughter’s an online kid as well, but I think she really linked the Canadian version in book form (though there are many fewer schools) and could highlight. I’m expecting a bit of the same here. Then, perhaps the next set of books (Insiders, 40 Colleges, and Non-Ivies) and online sites and visiting. Given her personality (prone to some anxiety) and her hyper-pressured high school environment (in which many parents will consider themselves failures if their kids don’t get into the best schools), I want to make sure she has some safeties she’ll feel good about so that a lot of that pressure will just pass her by.</p>
<p>Princeton Review’s Best 3__ Colleges (don’t remember what the number is anymore) is quite comprehensive, and lists a lot of even the more lesser known schools. It is a good book to find safeties. Fiske’s is very descriptive and each profile can run more than two pages, so it focuses on fewer schools.</p>
I apologize for the short post; I had to leave abruptly. Here’s my problem with PR: the descriptions are anecdotal and the methodology is unclear. How does PR decide which student quotes to include, and who receives the survey to begin with? Books with seemingly candid and personable descriptions are dangerous because they appeal to emotions without clear evidence. PR has the incentive to choose sensational or polarized quotes to make the descriptions livelier. A university with 20000 undergraduates cannot be adequately summarized with a few quotes from individual students.</p>
<p>Use hard statistics and information from college websites, then visit. This approach worked well for some of my now-graduated friends, and so far it’s working for me. IPEDS is an excellent source of unbiased data (Google it). Think about who colleges are trying to appeal to with their promotional material - do they seem to want people like you?</p>
<p>I personally made my list with IPEDS data on areas important to me (size of programs interesting me, test scores, etc.) The touchy-feely stuff is useful for narrowing down 30 excellent choices, not picking the 30 to start out with.</p>
<p>noimagination’s expanded post is actually very helpful. I do agree with the idea of approaching the list-making by using sizes, regions, programs etc and then narrowing it down by school personality etc. That being said, it can help to have a general feel of the schools as you’re making the larger list… it all depends.</p>
<p>I would say that PR, Fiske, and almost all other college guidebooks have information on size, region, and programs, so I don’t see what’s the beef with that. </p>
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<p>I respect PR’s method because what the company does is market to students on campus to visit their website, where they have a survey for students to fill out. I have participated in this myself also. They also show you their current description of the school and ask the student to rate the accuracy of the description and any criticisms they may have. Student quotes get repetitive over a large sample size, so they will pick quotes that are most reflected in their sample. If a school has 20k undergraduates, most people will say that the school is too big to characterize, and that is true.</p>