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alanarch
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Posted: Thu Aug 31st, 2006 05:08 pm |
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While cleaning out some papers, I came across a listing of college books that included this book. I went to a website that included a few excerpts and it seemed interesting. I do understand that the book has a strong bias but having said that, does it have any merit? I assume that there are people that have read every college guide book out there so I am looking for some reviews and/or impressions.
The author is ISI
Last edited on Thu Aug 31st, 2006 05:18 pm by alanarch
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Fri Sep 1st, 2006 05:22 am |
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Alan,
Yes, the ISI book does tend to elicit strong opinions because it is backed by a group that some consider to be very conservative.
While acknowledging that, I still have found the ISI book useful because of the level of detail it provides regarding the core requirements at various schools. It is the only guidebook that really looks at the curriculum of each school in-depth. Whether you agree or not with some of the assessments, the factual information included on curriculums would take hours to research individually for each school.
And I do think it is important to consider possible politicization (whether liberal OR conservative) of the educational approach at individual schools in order to find the right fit for individual students. It is definitely true that the curriculum at some schools are more politically correct than at others, while others are more conservative. This doesn't make those schools "better" or "worse" in my opinion, just a different fit for different kids. The ISI book was useful to me when I first read it some years ago because it helped me to understand that fit occurs on many different levels and that there are very few one-size-fits-schools out there.
In general, I like to use many sources to learn about schools, and to get a sense of what they are like and which students would likely find them a good fit. The ISI book is another source to consider, even if some have problems with its sponsoring organization. I personally found it made me re-think which questions to ask about various schools, especially in terms of curriculum approaches, so that I could better match schools to individual students. From that perspective, and the level of depth of information it provides, I think it is a worthwhile read, even if you disagree with the political views of the sponsors.
Last edited on Fri Sep 1st, 2006 05:27 am by CarolynLawrence
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alanarch
Member
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Posted: Fri Sep 1st, 2006 12:50 pm |
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Thank you. That was the answer I was looking for. Bias notwithstanding, it sounded it like it had interesting details about each college. I am getting it used from Amazon for only $10. Relative to all the other books I have bought, it doesn't seem too expensive. Thanks again.
Alan
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WestrnMom
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Posted: Fri Sep 1st, 2006 03:51 pm |
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Is there any way to know what schools are included? Do they have west coast schools other than the UCs? I read the reviews on Amazon.com and it does say the book covers schools that don't have excessive drinking and partying, which might be refreshing, however it only includes 125 campuses (out of over 3000). So it may be very limited.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Fri Sep 1st, 2006 04:10 pm |
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WestrnMom, The latest edition I have is the 2004 edition. Here are the schools it includes: Amherst,U of Arizona, Bard, Barnard, Bates, Baylor, SUNYBinghamton, Birmingham Southern Boston College, Boston U, Bowdoin, Brandeis, Brigham YUoung, Brown, Bryn Mawr, Bucknell, UCB, UCD, UCLA,UCSDUCSB, Cal Tech, Calvin, Carleton, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western, Catholic, U of Chicago, ChristendomCollege, All of the Calremont Colleges, Clemson, Colby, Colgate, Colorado, U of Colorado Boulder, Columbia, Conn College, U of Conn, Cornell, U of Dallas, Dartmouth, Davidson, Duke, Emory, U of Fl., Franciscan U, Furman, George Mason, Georgetown, U of GA, GA Tech, Gonzaga, Grinnell,Grove ?City, Hamilton, Hampden-Sydney, Harvard,Haverford,Hillsdale, Holy Cross, UIUC, Indiana, U of Iowa, James Madison, Johns Hopkins, Kenyon, Lafayette, Louisiana State, Macalester, U MD, MIT, Miami U (OH), U of Michigan,Michigan State, Middlebury, UMN-twin cities, Morehouse,Mt.Holyoke,NYU, UNC, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Oberlin, OSU, U Penn, Penn State,Pepperdine, Princeton, PRovidence, Reed, Rhodes, Rice, Rutgers, St. Johns College, Seton Hall, Sewanee, Smith, USC, Spelman, Stanford,Swarthmore, UTA, Texas A&M, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, Tufts, Tulane, Vanderbilt, Vassar, Villanova, UVA, Wabash, Wake Foreste, U of Washington,WUSTL, Washington & Lee, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Wheaton (IL), Whitman, William andMAry, Williams, U of Wisconsin and Yale. Whew!
AlanArch, For $10, it is definitely worth a read. I found its descriptions of the colleges to be interesting and useful, and some schools that one would have assumed a conservative group would have automatically panned actually have very positive reviews. Reed, for instance. So, again, another viewpoint to add in to the mix.
Last edited on Fri Sep 1st, 2006 04:25 pm by CarolynLawrence
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alanarch
Member
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Posted: Fri Sep 1st, 2006 04:17 pm |
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These are the schools that are reviewed.
New England
Amherst College
Bates College
Boston College
Boston University
Bowdoin College
Brandeis University
Brown University
Colby College
Connecticut College
University of Connecticut
Dartmouth College
Harvard University
College of the Holy Cross
Marlboro College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Middlebury College
Mount Holyoke College
Providence College
Smith College
Thomas More College of Liberal Arts
Tufts University
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College
Yale University
Middle Atlantic
Bard College
Barnard College
Bryn Mawr College
Bucknell University
Carnegie Mellon University
Catholic University of America
Colgate University
Columbia University
Cooper Union
Cornell University
Georgetown University
Grove City College
Hamilton College
Haverford College
Johns Hopkins University
Lafayette College
New York University
State University of New York – Binghamton
University of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania State University
Princeton University
Rutgers University
St. John’s College
Seton Hall University
Swarthmore College
United States Military Academy
United States Naval Academy
Vassar College
Villanova University
South
Auburn University
Christendom College
Clemson University
Davidson College
Duke University
Emory University
University of Florida
Furman University
George Mason University
University of Georgia
Georgia Institute of Technology
Hampden-Sydney College
Louisiana State University
University of Mississippi
Morehouse College
New College of Florida
University of North Carolina
Oglethorpe University
Rhodes College
Sewanee, the University of the South
Spelman College
Tulane University
Vanderbilt University
University of Virginia
Wake Forest University
Washington and Lee University
College of William and Mary
Wofford College
Midwest
Calvin College
Carleton College
University of Chicago
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Grinnell College
Hillsdale College
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Indiana University – Bloomington
University of Iowa
University of Kansas
Kenyon College
Macalester College
Miami University
University of Michigan
Michigan State University
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities
Northwestern University
University of Notre Dame
Oberlin College
Ohio State University
Purdue University
St. Olaf College
Wabash College
Washington University
Wheaton College
University of Wisconsin – Madison
West
University of Arizona
Baylor University
Brigham Young University
University of California at Berkeley
University of California at Davis
University of California at Los Angeles
University of California at San Diego
University of California at Santa Barbara
California Institute of Technology
Claremont Colleges
Colorado College
University of Colorado at Boulder
University of Dallas
Gonzaga University
Pepperdine University
Reed College
Rice University
University of Southern California
Southern Methodist University
Stanford University
University of Texas at Austin
Texas A&M University
Thomas Aquinas College
United States Air Force Academy
University of Washington
Whitman College
Last edited on Sat Sep 2nd, 2006 09:50 am by alanarch
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alanarch
Member
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Posted: Fri Sep 1st, 2006 04:21 pm |
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I go this off the ISI website and it is for 2006
Carolyn, you are quicker and know how your site formats the copying and pasting.
Last edited on Fri Sep 1st, 2006 04:25 pm by alanarch
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Fri Sep 1st, 2006 04:31 pm |
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Alan, Great minds think alike.
I must admit I have a personal reason for finding this book useful. It was clear from the start that my daughter would be looking at sort of alternative type schools. This book helped me sort out my feelings about that and understand that alternative is not necessarily bad as long as the basics for a good education are in place. As I said above, the book also provided a framework for questions to ask and how to look at those pesky course catalogs. With my son now starting to look at schools, and clearly also seeming to prefer schools that might be a bit unusual in some minds, I expect another read will be in order.
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alanarch
Member
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Posted: Fri Sep 1st, 2006 05:44 pm |
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| If it's not too personal, could you clarify what you mean by alternative schools? Are you talking about schools like Wesleyan and Oberlin or something else. One of things I am trying to find/figure out is whether these schools are a good fit for my son. Part of the issue is finding out where his values differ from mine and where to push and where to hang back. As much as I do all this research, much of it he never sees as I am waiting to see the kind of school he shows a specific interest in. I keep the duct tape on but when he asks, I would like to have some kind of answer. I am resolved that the questions may never be asked and that the choices are his. Luckily, the universe of schools that he is interested at the moment I can easily live with.
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WestrnMom
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Posted: Fri Sep 1st, 2006 06:56 pm |
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Alanarch, thank you for the list. Very few schools on S's radar are included, so it wouldn't be useful for him. I think it's very important for all parents sending children out to college to realize that schools have an agenda. It may be subtle, it may be very obvious, but your child will not go to school untouched by the values and morals of the professors and the institutions, whether they are extremely liberal, conservative or somewhere in between. A strong student with a good sense of self can weed through what works and what doesn't, but those who aren't may be easily swayed by the values of the institution.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Fri Sep 1st, 2006 11:49 pm |
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Alan,
Not too personal a question. By alternative, I meant schools that march to the beat of their own drummer. Oberlin and Wesleyan would both be good examples, as would Beloit and Earlham.
I went through a process very much like what you are describing with your son. We all, I think, kind of have an image of our children's future and place in the world, and when that image veers a bit from their own image of their future and place in the world, it can be a bit confusing. I ended up having to trust my daughter's instincts, but did a lot of research "behind the scenes" to make sure she'd ultimately end up in a place where she'd get what she needed from her education. There were definitely certain schools that I (and my husband, who tends to be more conservative than I) would have probably nixed, but the funny thing is my daughter nixed most of them herself before we even said a thing, so we grew to trust her judgment and instinct.
So far, so good. She's very happy with the social fit, excited by her classes, and we're happy with what we've seen so far of the curriculum and advising. We'll see how it goes over the next four years.
Last edited on Sat Sep 2nd, 2006 12:01 am by CarolynLawrence
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WestrnMom
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Posted: Sat Sep 2nd, 2006 02:06 am |
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How do you determine social fit? We're trying, but it's hard in a one hour campus visit, or from reading literature.
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alanarch
Member
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Posted: Sat Sep 2nd, 2006 02:19 am |
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| That is the dilemma that most of us are trying to figure out. I am trying to pull from as many sources as possible.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Sat Sep 2nd, 2006 02:28 am |
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Alan and WestrnMom,
I think you are on target: pull as much information as possible from many sources, encourage your child to think and talk about what their current friends are like and what type of people they'd like to hang out with in college, and then compare the two. And, visit a lot of schools. Most kids can't automatically explain what they're looking for and where they might feel comfortable, but they'll start to know it when they start to see it. 
Last edited on Sat Sep 2nd, 2006 02:28 am by CarolynLawrence
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Joan
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Posted: Sat Sep 2nd, 2006 12:50 pm |
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| this book (if It's the one I'm thinking of) also notes great profs a each school reviewed and lists courses that could be taken to create a liberal arts / distribution requirement at schools that don't have such programs or requirements. Although the tone was a little conservative for my taste, the reviews were more in depth than some of the other college guides and helped us to confirm and/or rule out schools from consideration. Last edited on Sat Sep 2nd, 2006 12:52 pm by Joan
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WestrnMom
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Posted: Sat Sep 2nd, 2006 04:35 pm |
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I'm now convinced the only way to determine social fit is to visit the schools while students are on campus. You get a good overall feeling for the school that you can't get from a book or website. We took the time to visit some schools, and S changed his mind drastically about them, based on the one visit. Students are more observant than adults, too. He saw things we missed.
I have looked for websites that offer student opinions of campuses, but other than studentsreview.com, which consists of biased self reports (often by students who dislike a school) I haven't found a good resource.
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mathmom
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Posted: Sat Sep 2nd, 2006 08:17 pm |
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One thing to keep in mind is that departments within a university can be quite different from each other. Just as an example 25 years ago art history at Harvard was very conservative and focussed on connoisseurship, while Yale's department emphasized the social context of art. OTOH you probably couldn't have avoided a Marxist interpretation of history at Harvard back then. I have no idea what either department is like now though.
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CarolynLawrence
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Posted: Sun Sep 3rd, 2006 01:55 am |
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Mathmom, good point.
WestrnMom, early on my daughter made it crystal clear: she would not apply to any college that she hadn't seen while students were present. She claimed she could tell everything from just the way people looked at her when she walked into the dining hall.
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alanarch
Member
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Posted: Sun Sep 3rd, 2006 02:17 am |
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| Carolyn, you might want to ask her now whether she thinks that is still a valid way to judge a school.
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leftcoast
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Posted: Sun Sep 3rd, 2006 08:01 am |
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I know my daughter felt the same way. She refused to visit the summer before her senior year, and insisted on making visits to all prospective colleges during September and October of Senior year, especially difficult as we are west coasters and she was looking for an east coast campus. Nonetheless, she had her way. First she booked a flight to Washington DC with a return from NY in late September, scheduled interviews at GWU and American, and overnight at Goucher, followed by an interview at Barnard. Somewhere in transit between Baltimore and NY, she ended up spending the night in an NYU dorm room, feel in love --and he result was that the DC schools were dropped from the list and Barnard & NYU became her top 2 choices.
A month later she was off again, this time to Boston, where she planned an interview at Wellesley and visits to Brandeis and Northeastern, as well as a day trip to Brown. Heavy rains dampened her enthusiasm for the suburban colleges, so she cancelled her Wellesley and Brandeis, and visited Boston U instead.
I don't advise this sort of planning, but my daughter was able to pull it off -- she told all of her high school teachers of her plans at the first of the year and arranged to get assignments and make up work done in advance as much as possible. She did later add an additional safety college (Fordham U) without visiting, but made plans to visit when she returned in April to visit NYU for an admitted students event. However, the Fordham visit ended up being dropped when she received the notice from Barnard.
Based on my total inability to achieve phone contact with my daughter while she is apparently too busy socializing, it appears that Barnard must be an excellent social fit. So is NYU.... somewhere along the line she figured out that she could have the best of both by getting academics at Barnard and going down to Greenwich Village on weekends to socialize with her NYU friends -- so for my urban daughter who insisted that she needed to attend college in a "happening" town, all is well. (Though its possible that she would have been fine simply visiting the cities and not the colleges)
I think a BETTER approach would be to use vacation time to pre-visit "types" of colleges: big/small, urban/suburban/rural, universities/lac's, conservative/liberal to help narrow down the search. Some of these preferences may already be known to the students -- but the point is that school year visits are logistically more difficult, and it would have been much harder if my daughter's geographical boundaries had been more spread out.
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