Rating: 
Summary: Contrarian View of Higher Education
Review: Although I am many years removed from college and I do not have any college-bound children (yet!), I picked up this book mainly because of the title. You see, I am the product of an Ivy-League education, and I was curious to see what he had to say about my alma mater and other schools like it. Overall, I thought the book was thoughtful and had a lot of interesting things to say.The author's premise is that people often choose colleges based superficial things like "status" and "prestiege" and ignore those aspects of a school that are really important. He suggests that parents and students should consider things like the size, the academic environment, and the school's commitment to an undergraduate education. He also contends that many, if not most, of the "brand-name" schools fail in this regard. So far, I am sympathetic to this argument. Students needs to choose a school because it is "right" of them, and not because of its status. I have seen how parents and students fixate on a particular school because of its name and reputation without thinking about whether the school is really "right" for the student. However, he goes on to suggest that smaller, off-the-beaten-track liberal arts schools best meet the needs of students. This seems to contradict his initial premise that students should choose the school that is right for them. While the small, liberal arts environment might be suitable for some students, others might feel limited by its size and scope. As someone who studied engineering as an undergraduate, there is no way that a pure liberal arts environment would have satisfied my needs. I hope that readers "look beyond" the author's biases and take away the main message of the book: choosing a college is serious business, so make sure your choice is based upon sound reasoning.
Rating:
Summary: Contrarian View of Higher Education
Review: Although I am many years removed from college and I do not have any college-bound children (yet!), I picked up this book mainly because of the title. You see, I am the product of an Ivy-League education, and I was curious to see what he had to say about my alma mater and other schools like it. Overall, I thought the book was thoughtful and had a lot of interesting things to say. The author's premise is that people often choose colleges based superficial things like "status" and "prestiege" and ignore those aspects of a school that are really important. He suggests that parents and students should consider things like the size, the academic environment, and the school's commitment to an undergraduate education. He also contends that many, if not most, of the "brand-name" schools fail in this regard. So far, I am sympathetic to this argument. Students needs to choose a school because it is "right" of them, and not because of its status. I have seen how parents and students fixate on a particular school because of its name and reputation without thinking about whether the school is really "right" for the student. However, he goes on to suggest that smaller, off-the-beaten-track liberal arts schools best meet the needs of students. This seems to contradict his initial premise that students should choose the school that is right for them. While the small, liberal arts environment might be suitable for some students, others might feel limited by its size and scope. As someone who studied engineering as an undergraduate, there is no way that a pure liberal arts environment would have satisfied my needs. I hope that readers "look beyond" the author's biases and take away the main message of the book: choosing a college is serious business, so make sure your choice is based upon sound reasoning.
Rating: 
Summary: This book changed my life
Review: Haven't written reviews here before, but seeing with delight that this book is still around I had to write one. I read this book midway through my junior year of high-school and, struck by the sensible and sound reasoning that informs every argument, I applied to a completely different set of schools than I initially considered. Ultimately I feel I profited invaluably from attending a small liberal-arts college instead of a big brand name: I was going through a lot of troubles, and the individual attention and support I was able to obtain from small departments, small classes, and concerned and caring professors (even outside of my major) allowed me to find my inner strengths and embark on a life path I would not have dreamed of when I first arrived at college. Now how many of my friends who went to big-name research universities can say that? Thanks, Mr. Pope.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but contradictory
Review: I read this book after reading Mr. Pope's other book, "Colleges that Change Lives". I think this is a much better book, particularly in giving more detailed information on selecting a college in general. The other book was very skimpy on general information and consisted primarily of college profiles. I still have some issues with Mr. Pope's small (some might say tiny) school bias. At least here he provides more background as to why he believes what he believes. And the list of schools (though lacking in any depth), does contain a lot of larger (5000+) schools. If nothing else, Mr. Pope's two books are important -- they were pretty much the first books to take on the "Ivy League or Bust" mentality that seemed to mushroom out of control in the 60's and 70's. For that alone he deserves praise -- just take some of his diatribes with a grain of salt.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but contradictory
Review: I read this book after reading Mr. Pope's other book, "Colleges that Change Lives". I think this is a much better book, particularly in giving more detailed information on selecting a college in general. The other book was very skimpy on general information and consisted primarily of college profiles. I still have some issues with Mr. Pope's small (some might say tiny) school bias. At least here he provides more background as to why he believes what he believes. And the list of schools (though lacking in any depth), does contain a lot of larger (5000+) schools. If nothing else, Mr. Pope's two books are important -- they were pretty much the first books to take on the "Ivy League or Bust" mentality that seemed to mushroom out of control in the 60's and 70's. For that alone he deserves praise -- just take some of his diatribes with a grain of salt.
Rating:
Summary: some new ideas to help you evaluate your college choices
Review: Loren Pope encourages a solid liberal arts education and he introduces some worthy schools that are a little off the beaten path. He also gives his evaluation of many colleges that good students may be considering. His "twenty myths that can jinx your college choice" is priceless - do you think your college has to be larger than your high school? do you think you have to stay in the northeast to get a quality education? do you think your college has to be in or near a city? His answers will surprise you and open your mind to different alternatives. Try this book if you have been considering ivy league or little ivy type schools - he gives alternatives that may be better for you.
Rating: 
Summary: This book shattered my (erroneous) view of higher education.
Review: Loren Pope's intelligent writing not only makes the college selection process less daunting, but it forces one to evaluate and question his/her educational values. After years of poor performance and intellectual aloofness at two state mega-universities, I dropped out and took some time to get my bearings. During that period I read _Looking Beyond the Ivy League_ and now consider it to be one of my greatest literary influences. When it was my time to go back and finish college, I had the tools and criteria in place to make a knowledgeable decision. Though Pope never mentions my alma mater in his book and would probably even chide it as a "commuter" school, it nonetheless upholds the values in education that he and I hold so dear. Why only four stars then? Mr. Pope is slightly antagonistic towards computer technology and vocational knowledge - I personally find this unsound as well as elitist. A liberal education is excellence in itself, but it is even better when applied to practical matters and everyday problems. Bottom line: this book provides a better basis for decision than bumper stickers or college football rankings.
Rating: 
Summary: sappy little book
Review: Mr. Pope has a contrarian philosophy of higher education based on his career long inside knowledge as a college counselor. In his view, Ivy leagues are way over rated. Their reputation is perpetrated by the college rankings of U.S. News. According to Mr. Pope, such rankings are almost irrelevant as they don't measure in any way the quality of education provided to the students by such schools. But, they reinforce the reputation of schools which drive up application numbers, which in turn allows these "top" schools to become increasingly selective, and further boosts their U.S. News ranking. For Mr. Pope this is a self reinforcing not so virtuous cycle. Mr. Pope instead recommends to look at the multitude of excellent small liberal arts college located in the Midwest, South, and West that are not so well known. Because they are less well known, their respective acceptance rates are way higher than for their better known counterparts back East and the Ivy league. Yet, they often provide a just as good if not superior college education. Their professors are fully dedicated to teaching undergraduates. This is unlike in the Ivy league whose professors are more dedicated to research, publication, consulting, and PhD candidates. The above concepts are really mind opening and powerful. Where Mr. Pope's book falls short, is that his data is more than 20 years out of date. This is difficult to overlook or forgive given that he "updated" his book in 1995, yet his data covers the period from 1951 to 1980. So, at the time of the book's second publication, this book's data was already 15 years out of date. One has to wonder why he did not bother to update the data. It would have made his book so much better. With outdated data Mr. Pope inevitably makes many embarassing college recommendations. Many of the schools he is so crazy about, are now really poor educational performers that should have been screened out of any truly updated edition of this book. As an example, Antioch College in Ohio has a really poor freshman retention rate of 66%. This is the lowest freshman retention rate I have come across in my researching colleges. Similarly, in his other related book "Colleges that Change Lives" after doing some research, I screened out 20 of the 40 mentioned (or 50%) because of either low freshman retention rate, low graduation rate, and low percentage of graduates going on to graduate schools.
Rating:
Summary: Profound concepts but outdated data
Review: Mr. Pope has a contrarian philosophy of higher education based on his career long inside knowledge as a college counselor. In his view, Ivy leagues are way over rated. Their reputation is perpetrated by the college rankings of U.S. News. According to Mr. Pope, such rankings are almost irrelevant as they don't measure in any way the quality of education provided to the students by such schools. But, they reinforce the reputation of schools which drive up application numbers, which in turn allows these "top" schools to become increasingly selective, and further boosts their U.S. News ranking. For Mr. Pope this is a self reinforcing not so virtuous cycle. Mr. Pope instead recommends to look at the multitude of excellent small liberal arts college located in the Midwest, South, and West that are not so well known. Because they are less well known, their respective acceptance rates are way higher than for their better known counterparts back East and the Ivy league. Yet, they often provide a just as good if not superior college education. Their professors are fully dedicated to teaching undergraduates. This is unlike in the Ivy league whose professors are more dedicated to research, publication, consulting, and PhD candidates. The above concepts are really mind opening and powerful. Where Mr. Pope's book falls short, is that his data is more than 20 years out of date. This is difficult to overlook or forgive given that he "updated" his book in 1995, yet his data covers the period from 1951 to 1980. So, at the time of the book's second publication, this book's data was already 15 years out of date. One has to wonder why he did not bother to update the data. It would have made his book so much better. With outdated data Mr. Pope inevitably makes many embarassing college recommendations. Many of the schools he is so crazy about, are now really poor educational performers that should have been screened out of any truly updated edition of this book. As an example, Antioch College in Ohio has a really poor freshman retention rate of 66%. This is the lowest freshman retention rate I have come across in my researching colleges. Similarly, in his other related book "Colleges that Change Lives" after doing some research, I screened out 20 of the 40 mentioned (or 50%) because of either low freshman retention rate, low graduation rate, and low percentage of graduates going on to graduate schools.
Rating:
Summary: The Proof is in the Pudding
Review: My daughters, now 23 and 25 both used this book as the cornerstone of their college searches. Both chose colleges neither had heard of before, Hampshire College and Earlham College. Both schools were exactly right for both of them, and both girls followed Mr. Pope's advice in their selection process.
When visiting colleges they went when school was in session, attended classes, spent the night, had a student mentor (not a freshman) and ate in the dorm. One daughter visited an exhausting 12 schools, the other only 2 before she felt she had found her soul mate (Earlham). The daughter who picked Hampshire did so because she needs freedom to explore many venues, but the closeness of a small school community. At Hampshire she could attend any of the 5 school consortium at no additional tuition costs. So if Hampshire didn't have the exact class she wanted, she could use the free and frequent busses that run between the schools to take classes at Smith, Mt. Holyoke, University of Mass or Amherst.
The best thing about Mr. Pope's advice and bias on choosing a small school is that it's true. Not only do you get the small class size and individual attention of dedicated and well educated professors, but you have almost unlimited opportunities to explore social issues, sports, the arts and global society through personal involvement than most students at state schools.
In talking to peers who attended the oft chosen bigger schools, my girls found they had written more critical papers in one semester at their schools than friends had written in 4 years! At Earlham my daughter got to sing in the schools traveling performance choir for a semester in Vienna and Europe, be a teacher's assistant in German for a semester in Germany, live in a "Friendship" house, be a "featured artist" of the week in the school paper, play rugby for fun, write her first and second grant proposals and be able to successfully execute them.
The second daughter got to co-edit the school paper for a year and then resurrected the school's Literary Journal. Spent a summer in Bolivia writing for a paper owned by an alumni. She got to work in public radio, travel cross country researching her senior thesis, take horticulture at Smith and advanced Spanish at Amherst.
In small liberal arts colleges you don't have to be a "state champion" to play volleyball or football or rugby. You don't have to have ever had a voice lesson in order to sing in a choir and gain the skills you need to get into a performance choir. You can dream of being at the inaugural parade in Washington DC and the school provides transportation and teaches you how to be a socially responsible, safe protester who effectively gets a message across during a protest without offending (or getting arrested). You make friends and have a community that includes your professors. Friends you will keep for life.
Somewhere in one of Mr. Pope's two books he says something to the effect that the job you will have in 10 years probably does not exist right now, and that by having a liberal arts education a student is prepared to go out into the world and adapt and to continue learning while the world changes around them. That's exactly what my daughters are doing.
One, who majored in Art and German is living in Japan and teaching English for two years (and becoming fluent in a third language). Her student loans will be paid off in 2 years with a tidy nest egg stashed away for grad school. The other, who majored in non-fiction writing is now back in school preparing for grad school in library science with an emphases in the arts and art history. Neither are where they imagined they would be when they were 18 and looking ahead. Because they had the advantage of reading Mr. Pope's books, they certainly have had a much more interesting and fulfilling life and education than they would have had they followed the "herd" out of high school.
And yes, Mr. Pope's book and specific school recommendations need updating. Antioch College is a drug den, crumbling, graffiti sprawled and fading blip on the colligate radar screen that shouldn't even be in the phone book, much less this book. But overall, of the 14 colleges we visited, all seemed to deserve their recommendation.
Based on Mr. Pope's personal recommendations (I called and talked to him) we did find that financial aid was plentiful and at almost all schools the financial aid package would have (and did) made the small private schools as inexpensive as state schools. The value of this book's contrarian viewpoint outweighs the fact that the specific school information needs updating. That's why I gave it 5 stars but hope that Mr. Pope has another, better revision coming along.
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