Our son graduated high school in 2002. A friend suggested this book to us and we read it eagerly. We parents were struck by the wisdom of Pope's arguments that big name colleges charge a lot for the prestige of the name, while the colleges in this book just offer great education.

Our son studied the book and came up with four colleges he wanted to look at - and one he was pretty sure was the place for him. After visiting the campuses, that's where he ended up going, and he thinks it was the best thing that could have happened in his life. He would have never found that college without Pope's book.

We recommend the book enthusiastically to anyone we know with a child looking at colleges. They may not be for everyone, but understanding his philosophy of choosing them will make you a more discerning consumer.

This book, "Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change The Way You Think About Colleges", has become a well-known and classic guidebook read by many during the college selection process. It is the book that first introduces many people to the concept that small liberal arts colleges will often provide a superior education and are a better choices than big universities for many college-bound high school seniors. It challanges the notion that acceptance into an Ivy League or Ivy League wannabe school should be the ultimate goal for typical bright perspective college students. It points out that the Ivy League schools and most large universities target graduate students rather than undergraduate students. It also points out that professors at those schools are often far more interested in research than paying attention to whether undergraduate students are actually learning the subject or not. Small 4-year liberal arts colleges, however, are different. There, class sizes are smaller, and the professors are far more likely to care about whether their students actually understand what is being taught. The small liberal arts colleges are also much easier for the typical high school graduate to gain entry to. Ivy League schools are beyond reach for the vast majority of high school graduates, and many large public universities have many more applicants than they can accept.

The downside to most private 4-year liberal arts colleges, of course, is cost. The published tuition prices are usually considerably higher than those of most public universities. However, there is some good news about cost. Most private colleges today discount their tuition costs via financial aid and merit scholarships. So, the final cost of a private 4-year liberal arts college might not be too much more than that of a typical public university.

The vast majority of the book is devoted to descriptions of 40 colleges that the writer has selected based upon the criteria he chose to rate the impact of the colleges upon the lives of their students. Those 40 colleges he felt were the best among the colleges he considered. Some of the best information is therefore at the beginning of the book. Starting on about page 35, he begins his descriptons of the 40 colleges. I could not help wondering as I read through the college descriptions whether other writers would have used different criteria and therefore included some different colleges.

It should also be pointed out that one must be careful in wholely relying upon this book to make their college selection. One should take note that the writer included Antioch College among the 40 colleges. Antioch College, of course, is now closed. That fact suggests that parents need to consider more than just whether a college has historically been innovative or life-changing when considering whether they want to spend their money to send their children to it. They might also want to take a look at a college's financial picture, its enrollment statistics, and in just what manner the college has been changing lives.

Overall, "Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change The Way You Think About Colleges" should be a must-read book for parents and perspective college students. It will make one think about whether the best undergraduate college option is always a large public university.

The author makes a persuasive case for small, liberal arts colleges, many of whom are not well-known. He describes each school in detail, and does a very good job of pointing out each school's advantages. Initially I was quite impressed with the information.

What is lacking is very much information about problem areas or weaknesses of each college. The book is so laudatory, it lacks even-handedness. I am recommending the book highly, but think it needs to be complemented with a more balanced book. As an example, Pope (rightly, I think) raves about St. John's College in New Mexico, which uses the "Great Books" as primary sources. But, this praise needs to be balanced. Here are comments about St John's from The Princeton Review's "The Best 368 Colleges": "full of relentless intellectual duress..." " a school for super-geeks"...Everyone is a "voracious reader" and "kind of neurotic".
I'm not saying these comments are all valid, but they should be included for the reader's consideration.

Other than this criticism, I think the book is a great asset, and one we'll make good use of in researching colleges.

I felt that this book provided pretty general common knowledge information. It gave examples of people who's college experience had an impact on them, but did not increase my knowledge of making that match between applicants and colleges. This book did not satisfy my "need to know" about the college process.

I used this book in our college search. The book is worth reading, if only for the additional college information that it offers. My daughter ended up at one of these colleges four years ago. I am very satisfied.

I will always be grateful that someone recommended Loren Pope's book to me when my daughter was a high school sophomore. The book made such an impact on me that I remember where I was when I was reading it. (A soccer tournament in Lancaster, CA.) The book opened up an entirely new world for me because I had previously assumed that universities were superior to any pint-sized alternatives. It had never occurred me, my husband or daughter to consider liberal arts colleges.

Pope made an eloquent--and to me -- persuasive argument that liberal arts colleges are a wonderful choice for many students. I definitely don't think you should treat the 40 schools profiled as the only ones worth considering, but I would urge you to use the book to gain an appreciation of what small schools can offer.

My daughter just finished her freshman year at one of the 40 schools that's located in Pennsylvania and she had a marvelous experience. She liked ALL of her professors, she returned home bilingual (she's a Spanish major) and she made lots of friends. She brought five of them back home to San Diego during spring break.

After touring liberal arts colleges, my daughter ultimately didn't even want to apply to any University of California campuses. Liberal arts colleges, however, aren't cheap, which is why I set out to discover how we could afford a private school on a state school budget. Those efforts led me to write my own book, which was just released called The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price.

I think my book is a valuable supplement to Pope's book because it includes concrete advice on how you can slash the cost of private schools with high sticker prices. As I learned through my research as a financial journalist, the prices are meaningless if you know where to look.

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.

I was rather surprised at how useless this book was; it had received a number of good ratings and I was hoping for insightful descriptions of some good small colleges. Boy was I disappointed.

For all 40 colleges, the writeups numbingly repeat: "At XXXXXX the professors are kind, care about their students, are always accessible, used to teach at elite college YYYYY but moved to XXXXXXX where the students have turned out to be so much more engaged, yada, yada, yada." There are always a dozen quotes from students which you would hope would be interesting but instead come across as smiley faces who all were so happy to have gone to XXXXX, were transformed, think of the faculty as family, stay in touch with half the profs they ever took a class from, etc." XXXXXXX is evidently always one vast kumbaya gathering ... Now I can buy this about a few schools - but all forty? Sadly, Loren could have written a single review with blanks for the school name and then listed the forty schools.

The only noteworthy feature of the book is that there seems to be an unusual amount of attention to how the learning disabled fare at several of the schools.

The writing isn't bad and Loren does bring attention to a number of somewhat obscure schools so I'm giving him 3 stars; be forewarned however that there is little real content to help you distinguish between the colleges he describes.

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.

So here I am, three years graduated from Earlham College (a college which Pope praises lavishly and excessively and offers highly outdated information about in C.T.C.L.), wondering what my liberal arts degree was (and for that matter is) good for. To be sure, I enjoyed my time in college (and I suspect many of the graduated at the other 39 colleges Pope lists enjoyed their times there too). But parents (and high school students) 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 is all kids 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.

This book has helped me to evaluate colleges for my children and to discover that excellent, albeit lesser-known colleges, exist for bright teens who have different learning styles than predominant teaching styles, and therefore do not necessarily fit the SAT/GPA cookie-cutter mold once they are nearing senior year in high school. This book reports on a study of 40 colleges that teach to various learning differences and produce a high number of successful graduates, in business and number of post-baccalaureate degrees, as compared to the Ivy Leagues. "B" students, and even frustrated high school dropouts are acceptable among these colleges. One particular chapter entitled " Today's Learning Disabled are Tomorrow's Gifted" discusses at length various common indicators of "learning disabled" which are eye opening at least, because they are also normal characteristics of adolescents! I know from experience with my son having been in a Gifted Student program in grammar school, that having had teachers especially trained to instruct to "learning differences" hugely changed his life for the better. I highly recommend this book to any parent/high school student with similar concerns. I sincerely believe you can change your child's life if you read this book.

'Colleges That...' by Loren Pope, was an interesting read. Given the present state of affairs, (a luming cultural divide) I didn't think there were any liberal learning institutions in the U.S. that still embraced real learning. I was under the impression that most of our colleges and universities preferred to push our kids through the system in an assembly-line like fashion. It was a pleasure to find that we still have tolerant institutions in this country that preferred passionate, nurturing professor's with a fire for growing young minds. My only complaint is, I would've liked to have seen more than 40 universities listed. I think a list of maybe 400 schools would've been more palatable. Of course, that would've led to a title change, but what the hell?

I bought this book upon the recommendations of a college counselor. Loren Pope highlights 40 colleges that are deemed to be life changing. This is based on reviews written by students attending that institution and by other factors, such as professor-student interaction, grant percentages, campus size, location, and the college's philosophy. There are thousands of colleges and universities in the U.S. and my son and I were feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the potential choices. This book's goal is to make you think about what kind of learning environment you prefer and respond to. If it is your goal to emerge from the college experience with not only a good degree but with a good college experience and as a well rounded adult, then maybe you should read about colleges that can do just that. Until I read this book, I had never heard of half of the colleges this book mentioned. This book can increase your options of where you may want to go or what you might want to get out of the entire college experience.

This book will change your attitude toward the big name colleges in favor of some schools you may never have heard of that truly do Change Lives!

This certainly ranks up there. My other choices for 2007, hands down:

1) How To Ace Your Way Through College & Still Have a Life
2) The Official SAT Study Guide
3) Fiske Guide to Colleges

Dr. Vernon M
Cambridge, MA

A friend loaned me Loren Pope's previous two books. I read them and decided I would like to see what Pope has to say in 2007. Well, nothing particularly different from the other two books. I didn't need to purchase this book. The one thing this book does do differently is give a more thorough description of the 40 recommended schools. Loren Pope's books are an excellent resource when beginning the college search. i wish i had read her books before sending my oldest daughter to college.

I ordered this one with the Fiske and Ivy League titles. This one ranks at the bottom. Information contained inside not as detailed and left us with with college admission questions. Check it out for yourself at a bookstore before you make your purchase here.

This book is a must for anyone looking at colleges. After reading another Pope book "Looking Beyond the Ivy League...," I was already leaning away from any large colleges. I then read "The Gatekeepers" which was fascinating, but leaves one with the feeling that they should be grateful if a college accepts them.

Colleges That Change Lives reminds us that WE are the customer. WE are choosing the school and we should do it by keeping in mind that our children's education is more important than being able to say our child went to Harvard, Yale, etc. There are schools that welcome our children. Why should we put our children through the stress of applying somewhere they are not likely to get in, where they are not likely to get the close attention most of us need to learn better?

The one thing that stands out in my mind about the highly-selective, well-known schools after reading this book is that we assume the colleges are good (and best for our child) based on the kind of students they accept.

The results are another thing. We, as consumers, assume that if the "best" students get in to those schools, they automatically do well and are assured a successful future. What do we base that on? Assumptions aren't enough.

Read this book.

This is a great book. Forget about all you think you know about colleges - it's 99% myth anyway. Learn about some excellent schools (many of which will give you great financial aid) that you might not have thought about.

My son attends one of these schools (Denison U) and it has been fabulous. In addition to very personal attention, accessible profs, small classes, friendly kids, and a really beautiful campus, they gave him an extraordinary scholarship and he was able to do a paid research internship his second year. In spite of having been accepted at much better known (and higher "ranked") schools, he has never looked back.

Broaden your search and start here.

The book was very interesting and a great guide, we thought. My son chose to attend Antioch College based on the wonderful reviews and his own feelings after visiting the school. The Board of Trustees voted just last week to CLOSE the school July, 2008. Hence, he is looking for another school as I write. I am a more than a little concerned about using this guide again!

Not worth the time or money for any information. Better information can be found.

The title of this book is apt--it's not just that I learned about colleges I might not otherwise have heard or or might not otherwise have encouraged my child to consider. The book changed the way I think about colleges. It gave me some very different metrics and criteria than the ones I already had--and I'm in higher education and thought I already knew everything there was to know about this topic. Well worth reading.

I love colleges and universities. I should. I've been in and out of them for the last twenty years. For me, our colleges and universities are the country's greatest asset. Besides that, this incredible diversity of institutions, sprinkled across every physical, geographical, architectural and intellectual setting one can imagine, is a nearly endless repository of human knowledge, discovery and American history. If you love colleges like I do, read this book just for the fun of it. It's very well written, but I'm not really sure it's effective as a college guide.

Most publications in this genre are of the "best colleges" variety. This one is not. Consider the following statements:

Harvard just isn't the right fit for everyone. Students should consider the colleges which can best provide them with the kind of services and environment they need to thrive.

You can receive as good an education at Rhodes College as at Princeton. The Ivy League really isn't as good as its reputation suggests.

You should go to liberal arts college to further explore and develop your interests, and think about your plans for graduate school.

The elite universities are hard to get into, but easy to graduate from. It's the getting in that's tough.

Why would I go directly to Georgetown University, which is so expensive, when I can spend two years at a liberal arts college and transfer to Georgetown later? I save money that way.

Teaching is more important than research.

The value added in college is more important than the brand name on the degree certificate.

The most important function of a college or university is to nurture and sustain democracy.

If you generally agree with any or all of these concepts, you'll like this book. If you believe these ideas to be mostly revisionist anti-Ivy League idealism, or patronizing statements intended to disguise the elitism of the speaker, you'll think this book is nothing more than fire kindling. Much of what Pope writes here reminds me of any number of articles appearing from time to time in The Chronicle of Higher Education with that patronizing "Not everyone needs to go to a name brand college" tone. Right, because if not everyone needs to go to a name brand college, the elite status of those who DO go to a name brand college is maintained (sarcasm intended).

I tend to not buy the "virtues of the middle" argument because I find it dismissive of students' rationality and their desire to excel. I can understand why, literally, every high school graduate in the country wants to go to Harvard; because Harvard matters and students are rational. I believe prospective students learn more, and maximize their chances to excel by stretching beyond their perceived limits. A student will never know if she can attend Duke unless she applies. I'd hate for her to give up that opportunity because a gate-keeping author like Pope thinks she's a better "fit" at Guilford.

Rather than candy coating the truth, as this book does, I think most prospective students want to know the facts: Harvard is the best because it has the best faculty, the most money, attracts the smartest, most intellectually curious students, offers the best post-graduate opportunities and is located in lovely Cambridge. But many students are just going to have to settle for Birmingham-Southern because, well, they will never get into Harvard. College admission is competitive, and that makes colleges better, not worse.

I think a better strategy for a book like this would be to identify the "hidden gems", to cite the much overused phrase. Perhaps Loren can tell us which colleges and universities are the sleepers. An advisor told me long ago that the best college for me is the one that will admit me now, but would reject me in a decade. The students who applied (and were admitted) about twenty years ago to Rice University, Washington University, Case Western Reserve University, and others like these are enjoying the benefits now, as those institutions become more distinguished.

And here's another hint: If you don't think a nice framed diploma from Stanford or Rice will change your life, think again.

I love colleges and universities. I should. I've been in and out of them for the last twenty years. For me, our colleges and universities are the country's greatest asset. Besides that, this incredible diversity of institutions, sprinkled across every physical, geographical, architectural and intellectual setting one can imagine, is a nearly endless repository of human knowledge, discovery and American history. If you love colleges like I do, read this book just for the fun of it. It's very well written, but I'm not really sure it's effective as a college guide.

Most publications in this genre are of the "best colleges" variety. This one is not. Consider the following statements:

Harvard just isn't the right fit for everyone. Students should consider the colleges which can best provide them with the kind of services and environment they need to thrive.

You can receive as good an education at Rhodes College as at Princeton. The Ivy League really isn't as good as its reputation suggests.

You should go to liberal arts college to further explore and develop your interests, and think about your plans for graduate school.

The elite universities are hard to get into, but easy to graduate from. It's the getting in that's tough.

Why would I go directly to Georgetown University, which is so expensive, when I can spend two years at a liberal arts college and transfer to Georgetown later? I save money that way.

Teaching is more important than research.

The value added in college is more important than the brand name on the degree certificate.

The most important function of a college or university is to nurture and sustain democracy.

If you generally agree with any or all of these concepts, you'll like this book. If you believe these ideas to be mostly revisionist anti-Ivy League idealism, or patronizing statements intended to disguise the elitism of the speaker, you'll think this book is nothing more than fire kindling. Much of what Pope writes here reminds me of any number of articles appearing from time to time in The Chronicle of Higher Education with that patronizing "Not everyone needs to go to a name brand college" tone. Right, because if not everyone needs to go to a name brand college, the elite status of those who DO go to a name brand college is maintained (sarcasm intended).

I tend to not buy the "virtues of the middle" argument because I find it dismissive of students' rationality and their desire to excel. I can understand why, literally, every high school graduate in the country wants to go to Harvard; because Harvard matters and students are rational. I believe prospective students learn more, and maximize their chances to excel by stretching beyond their perceived limits. A student will never know if she can attend Duke unless she applies. I'd hate for her to give up that opportunity because a gate-keeping author like Pope thinks she's a better "fit" at Guilford.

Rather than candy coating the truth, as this book does, I think most prospective students would rather know the facts: Harvard is the best because it has the best faculty, the most money, attracts the smartest, most intellectually curious students, offers the best post-graduate opportunities and is located in lovely Cambridge. But many students are just going to have to settle for Birmingham-Southern because, well, they will never get into Harvard. College admission is competitive, and that makes colleges better, not worse.

And here's another hint: If you don't think a nice framed diploma from Stanford will change your life, think again.

I'm looking for a book to get my nephew thinking about colleges to attend, but this certainly isn't the right one. I think it's a good idea for him to shoot for an Ivy or sister school and this book is far too negative about them. It seems misleading at best to imply that the Harvard class of 1958 is destitute, and to say that Ivy schools are running scams at the undergraduate level. It may outline a good safety plan or path for specific circumstances, but I think it's dishing out bad advice in regards to the benefits and real experience of the Ivies. Such a shame as it would have been a nice book had the author stuck to providing additional options for consideration while holding his Ivy bashing tounge a bit.

I'm looking for a book to get my nephew thinking about colleges to attend, but this certainly isn't the right one. I think it's a good idea for him to shoot for an Ivy or sister school and this book is far too negative about them. It seems misleading at best to imply that the Harvard class of 1958 is destitute, and to say that Ivy schools are running scams at the undergraduate level. It may outline a good safety plan or path for specific circumstances, but I think it's dishing out bad advice in regards to the benefits and real experience of the Ivies. Such a shame as it would have been a nice book to buy for him had the author held her Ivy bashing tounge a bit.

What a refreshing change from all those other college guides! This book neither gushes over the ultra-Ivies, nor chuckles at the party-hearty habits of the big universities; instead, it offers hope to the average student, the learning disabled, and the late-blooming adolescent. It focuses on pointing readers in the direction of colleges that make a difference in the lives of young men and women, and in the community at large. A chapter in the beginning, entitled "Today's Learning Disabled Will Be Tomorrow's Gifted", while perhaps slightly over-optimistic, nevertheless opened my eyes to so many possibilities for my son. If you are a hopeful idealist, looking to do something that matters in your life, or looking to guide your underacheiving or learning challenged child, and you're looking for a college that cares about its students and truly wants to admit the students who apply, do as I did and buy or borrow this book today.

As an Independent Educational Consultant, I often give this book to my students that think they want to attend a big university or a name brand school. Often students fall through the cracks at these well-known schools, but the Colleges That Change Lives are nurturing environments that do not let students become just a number. If a student has graduate school aspirations, I especially recommend this book, because these schools have much better track records for preparing and having their students accepted into first choice graduate programs. One of the criteria for being in Colleges That Change Lives is a school cannot be too selective. Even though some of these schools have become quite popular from inclusion in this book, they still accept other than straight A students, because they firmly believe in the learning experience gained from the academic mix of students. This updated version is even more inspiring than the previous. These colleges really do change lives!

I've tried, but I just can't get into this book. Most of the institutions are in the east and we live in the southwest! Anyway, I found this book to be dull and hard to read.

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.

I actually graduated 25 years ago from one of those 40 schools Pope reviewed. Looking back, I do agree that although my college was not a "name brand" college, the education I got was like no other. They were formative years and as Pope says, I was "educated" not "trained".

Looking back to those days at college, I would attribute much good of what I am today to attending that Liberal Arts College. My graduate school, post college, was a Big Ten University. The difference? While the Big Ten U. was very "competitive" based, my experience at the Liberal Arts College mentioned in Pope's book was "collaborative".

Yes, I do agree that we are oversold on "brand-name" schools, and Pope's book would be a good guide to exploring your options. If you are thinking of sending your child to, or if you yourself are considering, college, then this book is a "must read" !!

I enjoyed the book a lot, especially its focusing on a small number of not-often-discussed colleges. Well-written and thoughtful throughout, the book would be of use to students with not-at-that perfect records, who are looking for a good alternative to some of the very hard to get into "elite" schools. A good "sister book" for students considering colleges, which I also quite liked, was Professors' Guide to Getting Good Grades in College, by Lynn Jacobs and Jeremy Hyman. They tell, from the professors' point-of-view what students already in college can do to get A's. A useful thing, too.

I first bought this book 1.5 years ago when I was researching colleges for my oldest son. It changed the way I looked at selecting colleges from my prior misconceptions that "bigger is better" (like large state schools) and "it has to have a well-known name to be any good." Pope succeeded in convincing me that not only are there invaluable advantages to smaller-size schools but that there is definitely something to be said for "liberal arts & science" institutions that offer a well-rounded curriculum. I was able to relax then because my son had no idea what he wanted to pursue. As a result of reading the book, my son is now attending Cornell College in Iowa where he is getting a wonderful education in small classes with caring instructors and an administration that "took me by the hand," upon his initial arrival as a freshman, & addressed all my fears and concerns about leaving my son with a bunch of strangers 4 hours away. Because the book includes little quantitative information (%'s of in- vs out-of-staters, tuition costs, % of students who graduate/return sophomore year/go to graduate school, etc.) you will need to supplement this book with another, such as the Fiske guide, to give you a basis of comparison across schools. Even if you don't select any of the schools mentioned, it is worth a read if for nothing else other than a refreshing perspective.

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.

I have a daughter ready to apply to colleges this fall and have found this book very helpful in planning and sorting through the myriad of information out there.

What I liked: Understanding the administration's vision, including teaching personnel's qualifications and the number of qualified competent undergraduates that each school can turn out is very helpful.

What this book doesn't tell you is the underlying student culture, the nuances of the location and the freshman return rate and other important considerations. So some of these schools sound absolutely too good to be true, but when you additionally use other resources to learn about the school's geographic location, what students say about their school, etc., you get a better picture of the college in it's entirety.

I commend the author who is investigating each college to discover the best intellectual powerhouses out there. In the end, it's the applying senior from high school that has to figure out which college or university is going to provide the best supportive and enriching environment in which to truly learn and grow!

Definitely get this book but do not use it solely to make your decision to attend a particular college named in this book.

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 "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.

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.