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| Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges | 
 enlarge | Author: Loren Pope
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $8.69
You Save: $6.31 (42%)
New (39) Used (16) from $7.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 2169
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0143037366
Dewey Decimal Number: 378.73
EAN: 9780143037361
ASIN: 0143037366
Publication Date: July 25, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Now fully revisedthe perennially popular guide to choosing the right college
Prospective college students and their parents have been relying on Loren Popes expertise since 1995, when he published the first edition of this indispensable guide. This new edition profiles 41 collegesall of which outdo the Ivies and research universities in producing performers, not only among A students but also among those who get Bs and Cs. Contents include:
Evaluations of each schools program and personality
Candid assessments by students, professors, and deans
Information on the progress of graduates
This new edition not only revisits schools listed in previous volumes to give readers a comprehensive assessment, it also addresses such issues as homeschooling, learning disabilities, and single-sex education.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...
 He Is Still the Best August 17, 2006
82 out of 84 found this review helpful
If you ever hanker to think that your child may have been better off going to that school whose name everyone knows, pull out this book and read the first 20 pages and you will become instantly relaxed.
In a nutshell, Pope espouses that liberal arts undergraduate education in the Ivies is faltering, if not failing, but America has plenty of great liberal arts educational centers and they are at the numerous well established liberal arts colleges (LAC's) of America. Those LAC's and some "other" LAC's are great places for undergraduate education. Some of those "other" LAC's are the topic of this book.
This is the old book with quips at the end of the 40 schools which update his research of each respective institution. He has added passages at the end of the 40 schools to describe what has happened at some of the schools which makes his statement(s) of a decade ago as true or even truer than when originally written. In short, the LAC's of this book are not only still good schools, most are better schools than when he delivered their names in the original book.
He writes well. He is very persuasive. And, in the end, his arguments clearly show each school's strength through his writing skills and by the statistics recited throughout this book.
If you want more, there are two others on this same line of reasoning: "The College Admissions Mystique" by Bill Mayher and "Looking beyond the Ivy League: Finding the College That's Right for You" by Loren Pope. If you think Ivy (for undergraduate) is the answer before reading these three books, you may discover a change of opinion after reading these books.
 No schools listed in the west September 11, 2006
58 out of 82 found this review helpful
Wish I had known that the book focused on schools on the east coast, in the midwest, and in the southeast. No California schools are listed.
One of the only two books you need August 15, 2006
38 out of 40 found this review helpful
As a parent in the grips of high anxiety (I have a high school senior and I high school junior) I highly recommend this book. Although I am a bit concerned that these 40 schools are about to be swamped with applications, I think it will encourage familes to look for their own "schools that change lives." The other book I highly recommend is GETTING IN WITHIUT FREAKING OUT by Arlene Matthews. It is written for anxious, confused parents like me and lays out exactly what to worry about and what NOT to worry about as you and your kids negotiate every step if the school search and application process. The second book is also very reassuring and funny, which I appreciated.
 Insight Doesn't Come Easy, Folks May 24, 2008
28 out of 37 found this review helpful
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.
Too much gushing and too little objectivity December 19, 2006
27 out of 32 found this review helpful
I might agree that the "Ivies" are over-rated but this book just gushes on and on about how wonderful these 40 schools are. All of them are perfect and idyllic and everyone who ever went to any of them is a wonderful success and had wonderful and life changing experience at the school.
Somehow, I have to think the real world is a little less rosy than the picture this book paints. If you read one of the school descriptions you've pretty much covered them all as only the names and the adjectives for "wonderful" and "idyllic" change. Basically, it reads as though these 40 schools got together and decided to save money by publishing one sales brochure that includes all of them.
Check this one out from the library, read the first couple of chapters, skim through the descriptions for a few schools and write down the school names from the table of contents. Now get online and see if you can actually learn something about the school aside from the "fact" that it's idyllic and wonderful.
PS. I'm not knocking the schools, just the book. A little less sales and a little more info would have been nice.
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