The Princeton Review
The Best 366 Colleges 2008 Edition
By Robert Franck, Tom Meltzer, Christopher Maier, Erik Olson, Julie Doherty, and Eric Owens
Random House, Inc.,(New York, NY) 2008
$21.95, 813 pages, soft cover
Reviewed by Joe A. Edun
Counselor/College Adviser
Walter Johnson High School, (MD)
The Princeton Review’s purpose for developing this book was to give applicants and parents “better and broader information” to help them narrow the list of colleges that are right for them (p. 30).
The Best 366 Colleges 2008 Edition is organized into five parts.
Part I, the introduction, provides a brief college preparation guide for high school students, lists good schools for 15 of the most popular majors, explains the production of the book and affirms that 61 of its ranking lists are based entirely on students’ answers to its survey questions.
In Part II, it ranks schools by category, based on survey responses from 120,000 students in its best 366 colleges. The key categories which the survey is based are academics, quality of life, politics, demographics, social life and extracurricular activities.
On its controversial party schools category, the book states that such schools are outstanding enough to be included in their list of 366 but that such schools may not be right for “students seeking a campus at which the use of alcohol and drugs and the frat/sorority scene is, well, less exuberant.” (p.30) Be that as it may, the book includes 19 state universities and one private college in this category (p.47).
Part III, from page 51 through page 783 is the core of this book. Best 366 Colleges gives a profile for each college as follows:
- Campus Life
- Students
- Academics
- Selectivity
- Freshman Profile
- Deadlines
- Financial Facts
For example, Boston College gets a 92 rating for Campus Life and its total enrollment of 9,020 is 6 percent African American, 9 percent Asian, 8 percent Hispanic and 72 percent Caucasian. Its Academics Rating is 90 and 29 percent of applicants are accepted. Freshman Profile SAT Score ranges are 610-700 for Critical Reading, 640-720 for Math and 610-700 for Writing. The SAT or the ACT, with the writing exam, is required. Two SAT subject tests are required. Top 10 percent and Top 25 percent high school graduates admitted are 80 percent and 95 percent respectively. Sixty percent of its freshmen comes from public high schools and 97 countries are represented in its student population. Its regular application deadline is 1/1 and about 70 percent of undergraduates receive some financial aid.
High school students and their parents will find The Best 366 Colleges a helpful information source as they begin the college search process.
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