Canter Bridge

The Princeton Review Best 357 Colleges is a fun read.

Whether it’s an accurate selection of the 357 best or a clear portrayal of what the chosen few have to offer is another matter. It’s impossible to tell, though the valuable commentary you get in the Princeton Review is a good supplement to factual date you can get from the schools in question and from other sources.

In working with my two college-bound sons, we paired this work with the much more statistically-inclined Barron’s guide and some campus visits. They work together effectively.

The Princeton Review gives you some pretty crude but interesting classification of colleges and universities into groupings like ‘Diversity lacking on campus’, ‘Students are happy’ (valium usage up again?), and ‘Great food on campus’.

This is all great fun as far as it goes. But you’d be foolish to base too much of your decision on this one book.

One very helpful category is called ‘Applicants also look at and often prefer …’ , ‘… and sometimes prefer … ‘, and ‘… and rarely prefer …’

I find this feature helpful in figuring out which schools appeal to distinct groups of students and what the pecking order is considered to be.

The Princeton Review is worth your money as long as you triangulate on the schools that interest you by using additional sources of information.