College Guide Books

TheGreyKing
Wed, 10 May 2017 18:20:46 +0000

I have multiple versions of some college books, and I noticed that the only thing updated between years is the statistics. Much of the prose is the same, although a few lines are changed here and there.

If you refer to the Common Data Set for each college online, you can get the most recently published data that way instead.

So I would not recommend updating. Just buy books you do not have already, to enjoy a new narrative perspective.

I love college guide books. My son and I take them with a grain of salt, but a lot of the writers’ impressions end up aligning with ours-- or at least, after visiting a school, we can pick out lines that reinforce what we thought.

My son found The Insider’s Guide very funny. The Ultimate Guide to America’s Best Colleges also has some humor. Both are richly detailed. We also have, and like, Fiske and the Princeton Review. Reading all four, plus College Confidential and similar sites with student reviews, begins to reveal some commonalities across the different commentaries on the culture of each college.