University of Miami: Off the Record (College Prowler)

Rating:
Summary: Helpful Insight Into College From a Student's Perspective
Review: College Prowler is an organization that I wish existed a few years ago during my college search. They set out to offer high school students a look into a college from the perspective of students who go there.

This book about UM was written entirely by an actual UM student, instead of a bunch of numbers copied off a PR report. Books like The Princeton Review only give stats released by the school themselves, resulting in only positive, boring numbers being reported. College Prowler has categories on dorms, athletics, dining, fraternities and sororities, social life, and tons more. To ensure that the book isn't biased by the author, there are quotes from at least a dozen other students at the end of each section, offering opinions on UM from people of different genders, ages, races, and majors. The book contains everything those other number-filled books do, including stats like average SAT scores and percentage of boys vs. girls. But it goes way beyond that, devoting around 150 pages to one college, instead of the half a page you'd get in most other books.

This book is a great resource for your college search, and is also very helpful if you have gotten accepted to more than one school and are trying to decide. Chances are, the other school also has a College Prowler book about it, and by reading both you can see which college excels in the areas more important to you. There is also contact info for the author if you have any questions about UM not covered in the book, and would like to hear from a student instead of a PR person.