The Fiske Guide to Colleges 2003

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: For my own purposes, I found this guide more helpful than the Princeton Review guide. It hasunbiased profiles of colleges to help in the decision making. I found the Fiske guide a little more all-encompassing, because it includes a lot of student quotes and weaves it all together for a nice synopsis. I found that Princeton Review kind of just packed their guide with random student quotes. Initially I had the same slight frustration with the dollar-sign system of tuition costs, but you might as well go online and ask for a guide book for each specific school, because they always include tuition figures and they will definitely be precise and up to date.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not excellent
Review: I give it 3 stars because it will take at least two weeks of repeated reading of this book to be able to compare the colleges mentioned in this book. With Princeton Review's "Best 345 colleges", it takes much less time.

As a consumer, I want to know what's good and bad about a college. I want a college guide that is like a Consumer's Report, that will test, compare and examine colleges critically. Though there are many college guides on the market, few examine colleges with a critical eye. The only good ones in my opinion are:
1) Choosing the right college - 5 stars
2) Colleges that change lives - 4 stars
3) Cool colleges - 5 stars
4) Best 345 colleges - 4.5 stars
5) The Fiske Guide to Getting into the Right College - 4 stars

Since Fiske says something good about every college in this book, it takes a real detective work to find out what's bad about each college. I wish he points out the flaws in each college in a brief summary. For Harvard, the following would be a good summary:
1) Very serious grade inflation
2) Lots of classes taught by TAs
3) Professors are as unapproachable as stars in the sky
4) Large classes for freshman and sophomore years

This book is not as good as his other book, "The Fiske Guide to Getting into the Right College," which contains a chapter called "The one hour college finder." This chapter has a brief paragraph on the best colleges. Each paragraph is right on the mark. For example, concerning Swartmore, it says "Pound for pound, the most intellectual school in the nation..." With regards to Carleton, "...the best liberal arts college in Midwest. Predominantly liberal..."

So, my advice is to get his other book. Not this one.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not excellent
Review: I give it 3 stars because it will take at least two weeks of repeated reading of this book to be able to compare the colleges mentioned in this book. With Princeton Review's "Best 345 colleges", it takes much less time.

As a consumer, I want to know what's good and bad about a college. I want a college guide that is like a Consumer's Report, that will test, compare and examine colleges critically. Though there are many college guides on the market, few examine colleges with a critical eye. The only good ones in my opinion are:
1) Choosing the right college - 5 stars
2) Colleges that change lives - 4 stars
3) Cool colleges - 5 stars
4) Best 345 colleges - 4.5 stars
5) The Fiske Guide to Getting into the Right College - 4 stars

Since Fiske says something good about every college in this book, it takes a real detective work to find out what's bad about each college. I wish he points out the flaws in each college in a brief summary. For Harvard, the following would be a good summary:
1) Very serious grade inflation
2) Lots of classes taught by TAs
3) Professors are as unapproachable as stars in the sky
4) Large classes for freshman and sophomore years

This book is not as good as his other book, "The Fiske Guide to Getting into the Right College," which contains a chapter called "The one hour college finder." This chapter has a brief paragraph on the best colleges. Each paragraph is right on the mark. For example, concerning Swartmore, it says "Pound for pound, the most intellectual school in the nation..." With regards to Carleton, "...the best liberal arts college in Midwest. Predominantly liberal..."

So, my advice is to get his other book. Not this one.

Rating:
Summary: Good...
Review: If you are looking for a guidebook to colleges, this is the one you should get. DO NOT buy the Princeton Review's guide because all that information is available for free on their website (review.com). It's useful for beginning and narrowing down the college search. I wish that it would give actual tuition prices and I think it would be better to give some more admissions tips, but it's good for what it is.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Since the age 14, I have looked at Peterson's and CollegeBoard and all the websites and guidebooks in between, and yet it was not until I opened this great book that i was satisfied. I did not want the stats anymore, I did not want the tuition costs, NO.. i wanted the experience of the school from the student's perspectives presented in a logical, unbiased manner without spending hundreds of dollars on plane tickets and car rentals for endless campus visits--- we have a winner! Point one- just look at all the people who have purchased the book and taken time to write a review (i who never writes reviews)-- also we are mostly high school students who would rather spend the money on a night at the movies than buy a book, but they chose the book and it is worth it. Fiske clearly describes various aspects of the schools through quotes tediousley collected from student surveys. The phrase- "straight from the horses mouth" couldn't be more appropriate here. My routine as i approach my senior year is: think about college, start stressing, stress some more, whip out the ol' Fiske guide to review my top choice schools, and then be able to breath again....
The book is good for both a lost student or anxious parent. It includes a range of colleges for all types of people, and if you are just lost and read the book cover to cover-- it is truly the best starting place. You can start to figure out what you want in a college and which colleges have it. I would reccommend strlongly reading the introduction explaining his ratings, and i hope you buy this book because wherever you are in the college process- It is the book for you.