Choosing the Right College 2004: The Whole Truth About America's Top Schools (Choosing the Right College, 2004)

Rating:
Summary: A "must-read" for any prospective college student
Review: Now in a significantly expanded and thoroughly updated 2004 edition, Choosing The Right College offers a no-frills series of honest assessments of the academic curriculum, political atmosphere, and campus life of both public and private universities throughout America. Offering solid advice on the best departments, professors, and courses to pursue, as well as guidelines on the right questions to ask during campus visits, researched statistics, and body of extremely practical advice, Choosing The Right College is a "must-read" for any prospective college student (and the parents) debating where to embark on his or her future academic future.

Rating:
Summary: For a narrow target audience (honor students only)
Review: The book can hardly be called a college guide because it looks at only 125 schools. Of these, the vast majority are either Ivies, other highly selective private schools or a few prestigious state universities (e.g.,Berkeley). The target audience for this book consists of honor students with minimum board scores of 1,300 or better. It provides little meaningful information for the 'B' average student. When I first learned of this book, I expected that it would be a useful resource compared to the vanilla comments in college guides by Peterson, Fiske and especially Kaplan. I was mistaken. If your child is an honor student, the book does provide some useful insights about core curriculum, faculty leanings and campus political climate.

Rating:
Summary: the closing of the American mind
Review: This book, like so many voices in America today, tells readers to avoid exposure to facts and arguments from different political perspectives. Is the case for the Right today so intellectually fragile that students need to be counseled to avoid certain classes, programs, and colleges, lest they be "corrupted"?
This promotes a "hear no evil" dumbing-down of American culture and politics, leading to the current decay of true conservatism in this country. Surely conservatives would do better by counseling their children to seek out diverse sources of information that will challenge their assumptions and force them to sharpen their intellectual skills.

Rating:
Summary: Unique Info
Review: We got this book for our daughter and it provided a completely unique point of view. There is just no competition when it comes to analyzing schools on the issue of political correctness. It was especially interesting to read the descriptions of the colleges our family had first-hand knowledge about--from 20 years ago. My, how things have changed at our old alma mater. This book helped me reflect on how my daughter is going to need to filter--i.e., test--some of the liberal thinking that she will undoubtedly encounter, wherever she goes. We were able to discuss the kinds of things that she might be asked to do or buy into. She's smart and can make up her own mind. I sincerely hope she chooses a school where diversity of opinion is truly respected so that she can focus on being educated rather than learning to say "the right thing" to appease liberal faculty. Harvard called her recently to ask if she had any questions about Harvard. She asked if a student ever got a lower grade because her political views were different from the prof's views. THe Harvard rep said, "no, not if you can cite facts, you know, not just state your opinions." That's a little chilling for a young person who wants to state their opinion and test different points of view! The Harvard rep added that Harvard had been getting that question a lot lately. Could it be that people are starting to question whether even hallowed Harvard is too focused on providing political indoctrination rather than a solid liberal arts education?! This book makes you think twice about some of our most prestigious institutions.