Rating: 
Summary: Application Without the Pain
Review: AP_LIC_T_O_The Best 351 Colleges in the US... Surely mine was one of them, I thought, as I pulled the book off the shelf and began reading it. As I thumbed through the pages, different short..."pithy narratives" really is the right term... caught my eye. One of the things different about this rating system was that it was put together by interviewing students who had been to these colleges. Well... who better? One of the 351 was a technology institute in New Jersey. What kind of place was that? The book said that it gave a lot of bang for the buck even though there was a high cost of living in the area. Small student to teacher ratio. Musical organizations were not popular. Very little beer or liquor use among the students. Most students were commuters. Of course this meant that there was a lack of community life. I figured a lot of students commuted in order to better their careers rather than get their first experience of college. The college with the best academic rating was Yale. My college was not listed at all. Drat. Even so Best 351 tries to take the PAIN out of APPLICATION. I think it does a great job.
Rating:
Summary: A Guidance Councillor
Review: Do you want an Ivy quality education? Do you want to build character? Do you want to become a leader? Do you want a personal challenge? Do you want to understand the true meaning of education in America, as told by the all time greatest of educators, such as Thomas Jefferson? Then I recommend that all my students, as a companion to Robert Franek's wonderful book "The Best 351 Colleges", also read Norman Thomas Remick's wonderful book "West Point: Character Leadership Education: Thomas Jefferson". Then you can pour over the colleges and information in "The Best 351 Colleges", having a clearer insight and understanding of what you are looking for.
Rating:
Summary: A Guidance Councillor
Review: Editor John Katzman restates in this year's foreword how colleges and universities stonewalled some of his data requests: "We couldn't get any answers to these questions from many colleges. In fact, we couldn't get any answers to any questions from some schools. ... Until the schools demystify the admissions process, this book is your best bet." That's chutzpah. Publishing industry representatives participate in the common data set initiative (see www.commondataset.org). Why can't they pressure colleges and universities to release their data? Furthermore, many of the 351 top schools are public institutions and subject to state Freedom of Information Acts. The college guidebook industry needs to become more assertive. As it is, drawing on the common data set for most of its hard data, this guide resembles most other available college guides. No better, no worse. It provides some impressionistic information under the general rubric "students speak out," but putting this anecdotal information into any meaningful context is almost impossible. Totally absent is score information from tests taken by students in college, such as the Medical College Admissions Test, Law School Admissions Test, Graduate Record Examinations, or Graduate Management Admissions Test; yet, these scores would seem to reflect college achievement. This guide only lists information on test scores taken by entering high school students (for example, the SAT I, ACT, etc.). Little evident use is made of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). All freshmen and seniors at participating schools must take the survey, which questions students about their classroom experience, study habits and homework assignments, and asks them to evaluate the quality of education they receive. Unlike standardized tests, the survey depends entirely on subjective responses, and no attempt is made to assess what is actually learned in the classroom. Granted most schools try to hide NSSE information, but a proactive publishing industry should be able to obtain it. College guidebook publishers seem content to generate public interest by upgrading and downgrading schools in their rankings. They expend minimal resources in seeking new information or attempting new ways of viewing how well colleges and universities educate. That's a shame, for they shortchange the American consumer who is being asked to spend increasingly large sums, often going into debt for years, on higher educational services.
Rating: 
Summary: Stonewalled by the college industry or too passive?
Review: Editor John Katzman restates in this year's foreword how colleges and universities stonewalled some of his data requests: "We couldn't get any answers to these questions from many colleges. In fact, we couldn't get any answers to any questions from some schools. ... Until the schools demystify the admissions process, this book is your best bet." That's chutzpah. Publishing industry representatives participate in the common data set initiative (see www.commondataset.org). Why can't they pressure colleges and universities to release their data? Furthermore, many of the 351 top schools are public institutions and subject to state Freedom of Information Acts. The college guidebook industry needs to become more assertive. As it is, drawing on the common data set for most of its hard data, this guide resembles most other available college guides. No better, no worse. It provides some impressionistic information under the general rubric "students speak out," but putting this anecdotal information into any meaningful context is almost impossible. Totally absent is score information from tests taken by students in college, such as the Medical College Admissions Test, Law School Admissions Test, Graduate Record Examinations, or Graduate Management Admissions Test; yet, these scores would seem to reflect college achievement. This guide only lists information on test scores taken by entering high school students (for example, the SAT I, ACT, etc.). Little evident use is made of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). All freshmen and seniors at participating schools must take the survey, which questions students about their classroom experience, study habits and homework assignments, and asks them to evaluate the quality of education they receive. Unlike standardized tests, the survey depends entirely on subjective responses, and no attempt is made to assess what is actually learned in the classroom. Granted most schools try to hide NSSE information, but a proactive publishing industry should be able to obtain it. College guidebook publishers seem content to generate public interest by upgrading and downgrading schools in their rankings. They expend minimal resources in seeking new information or attempting new ways of viewing how well colleges and universities educate. That's a shame, for they shortchange the American consumer who is being asked to spend increasingly large sums, often going into debt for years, on higher educational services.
Rating: 
Summary: It is a copy of the previous book
Review: I am applying to college and I already owned the 2003 version of the book (which is very good, actually), but I wanted to read some fresh info about the colleges I chose. So I ordered this "NEW" version and was very disappointed. NONE of the colleges of my choice had ANYTHING new written about them. The Students Speak Out was simply the same as in the previous book, and you can read it for FREE on the Princeton Review site. The only thing that changed was the ratings part. They even took the students' quotes section from the previous book. It was utterly useless for me.
This book is excellent as a first college guide, but I do NOT recommend it to anyone who has a previous version.
Rating:
Summary: Almost identical to last year's book
Review: I understand that colleges don't change that much year to year. They say they only survey 100 to 125 colleges a year. The majority of the book is just a rehash of prior books. Some of the ratings are just bizarre. Save your money and just look up the book in a library.
Rating:
Summary: Free Advice
Review: I want an Ivy quality education. I want virtue. I want to become a leader. I want a personal challenge. I want to give something back to my family and country. I want a full scholarship, based on merit, not family situation. Does that sound like you? If so, pour over everything in Robert Franek's great catalogue, "The Best 351 Colleges", to touch all the bases, by all means...It's a great resource that will help you to find what IS best for you.
Rating: 
Summary: 2004?
Review: This book is an extensive guide to a very large number of schools. It has all the basic facts about these schools, as well as insider information from students that you won't find in the admissions pamphlets you were sent. However, much of this data is out of date. The numbers are at least three years old for a lot of the schools I was looking at: tuition is understated and enrollment figures are off. The book is also riddled with typos, mainly in the numbers department. Despite poor editing, it is still a useful guide to have. Although, I might add, what the students said about the school I chose was way off, so take their advice with a grain of salt.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not GREAT
Review: This book was definitely helpful in helping me sort through all the amazing colleges out there. But I found the rankings to be somewhat arbitrary and not really helpful. Also, they are all based on STUDENT SURVEYS, so they are inherently very subjective. So it's a really good starting point, but don't expect to find your dream college using this book.
Rating:
Summary: A good starting point but...........
Review: This is a must read for all families working on developing a short list of colleges for their high school kids. There is about 3,500 colleges in the U.S. Just by buying this book, you have now a selection of the top 10% of this large college pool. This guide provides so much more data than the U.S. News college ranking. There are over 60 college ranking categories associated with academics, quality of life, financial aid, and many other factors. Each schools are rated along three major factors: Campus Life, Academics, Selectivity. The feedback from students is invaluable, because this is how you find the real dope on any aspect of a specific college. There are several great tools associated with this book located at the Princeton Review website. One of them include a free online application utility where you can save you data. So, you don't need to reenter your personal data when you apply to different school. But, the most incredible tool is the Counselor-O-Matic feature. You enter your GPA, test scores (or what you anticipate these will be), and your preferences in terms of size, type, and another 20 or more defining categories. Out of the 351 school database, the Counsel-O-Matic gives you a selection of 5 best matches for your Reach, Match, and Safe school. If you register at the site (free), you will get 20 choices in each category (total 60). If you then click on any of the choices, you can get a ton of information regarding student feedback, rankings in academics, quality of life and many other categories. You also get a profile of the freshman class GPA, and test scores. You also get info of what is really important for the admission officers from this specific school. These represent invaluable tips that will maximize your chance of getting in. All the information extracted from the website is included in the book. The website is just a nifty way of using database technology to query and extract the relevant information you want.
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