Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges

Loved this book. Gave me a new outlook on smaller 4 year liberal art colleges. Highly recommend it to parents and their students who want to find out what type of college they are best suited for. Wish the author would review other liberal art colleges besides those listed. An easy read with great information!

There may be a few families who'd be helped by this book, and if so I'd hate to deprive them of it. However, if your child goes to a school with a halfway knowledgeable college counselor, and/or if you have the skills to use the internet, you don't need it and won't find it enlightening. Like a Frommer guidebook, it makes its own recommendations out of date in this era of over-applications. Frankly, the two schools I visited with my junior son didn't much resemble the expectations I'd formed from the book. As previous reviewers have noted, the sampling is loaded heavily toward the northeast and overwhelmingly toward "small liberal arts" colleges, the very sort of schools that over-determined parents are likely to believe would be best for their child in terms of "personal attention" from faculty. A bit of swine-flesh before the pearl gatherers: A little attention from a great faculty member is worth more than a lot of attention from a middling one.

The bottom line is that neither I nor my son found the book stimulating or useful.

This book is worthless now. The chspter on Southwestern is very misleadinhg and not good advice in picking a school. The prgressive regime of President Shilling has beem replaced by a minister bringing to an end the transformation. With large loss in the endowment in 2000 they are having a hard time doing anything innovative. I DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THR REST BUT IF THIS IS INDICATIVE DO NOT BUY OR USE THIS BOOK.

This book offers a useful perspective on the attributes that make a good college, taking attention away from how "exclusive" or hard to get into a college is and placing it instead on how well the college is able to deliver a quality education to students. I am sure there are many more than 40 colleges that fit this category, and much of the match to a student is quite personal anyway, but helping to take some of the frantic nature out of the college hunt is a good contribution.

Unlike most of the other people who have reviewed this book, most of whom merely have offspring at one of the forty colleges listed in Pope's book, I am a 2005 graduate of Earlham College (a college which Pope praises lavishly and excessively and offers highly outdated information about in C.T.C.L.) and now I find myself wondering what my liberal arts degree was (and for that matter is) good for. To be sure, I used Pope's book in making my college selection, and I enjoyed my time in college (and I suspect many/most of the graduates at the other 39 colleges Pope lists enjoyed their times there too). But parents, high school students, and society at large, need to ask themselves whether it is worth it to spend nearly (or more than) $150,000 that these fancy liberal arts colleges cost to send their kids to a place where they can explore their sexuality, drink beer, engage in drinking games, cuddle, go to protests, play frisbee, and read Foucault (and other such drivel), which, of course, is all students at liberal arts schools do these days. I honestly believe one can go to a trade school/community college, interact with a more a diverse segment of the population, earn a useful degree, and come out a better (if much less cynical and slightly less educated) person. Pope's advice is worth a look, but hardly the price.