How to Use This Book

How We Select the Colleges

One of the most difficult questions we wrestle with here at The Insider's Guide is which schools to include in the upcoming edition. From more than 2,000 four-year institutions nationwide, we only cover slightly over 300 colleges. We examine a number of criteria in deciding which colleges to select, but our first priority is always the quality of academics offered by the institution. Another key factor in our decision is the desire to offer a diversity of options in The Insider's Guide. Thus, we have included schools from all 50 states as well as several top institutions in Canada. In our school choices, we have also taken into account the range of extracurricular options available to students, including publications, teams, and ethnic organizations. Each year we review our list of schools, research potential additions, and try to include new colleges that have not been featured in the past. Our goal is to provide you with the latest and the most comprehensive insider information.

We have made a point to review the largest state-affiliated institutions because of the significant number of students who apply to and matriculate at their states' schools. These universities tend to offer a particularly wide range of opportunities. We have also made every effort to include a broad cross section of smaller colleges because of the unique education they offer. Many of these schools are liberal arts colleges, generally clustered in the Northeast, offering a broad but personalized education. To add to the diversity of schools reviewed by The Insider's Guide, we have also included selections from the most prominent technical schools and creative and performing arts schools. These institutions provide specialized education, combining general knowledge with a concentration in a particular field. The sampling of schools in this category is by no means comprehensive, and we encourage students interested in specialized institutions to explore their options more deeply through additional research.

In sum, this book covers the colleges we believe to be among the most noteworthy in both the United States and Canada. This selection does not imply in any way that you cannot get a good education at a school not listed in the Guide. We strongly encourage students to use strategies discussed within this book to explore the wide variety of schools that we did not have space to include here, including community colleges, state schools, international schools, and professional schools. In addition, it's not guaranteed that you will have a blissful four years if you attend one of the schools we feature! Rather, we believe that every school in the Guide offers students the raw materials for constructing an excellent education.

It's All Up to You

Now that you have picked up a copy of The Insider's Guide, it's up to you how to use it. A few dedicated readers scrutinize the book from start to finish, determined to gain the most complete understanding of the college process and the schools that are out there. Others flip through the Guide for only a few minutes to look at FYIs from schools that interest them or to read funny quotes taken from nearby colleges. Another good strategy is to use the College Finder, Editors' Choice lists, and statistics that begin each article to learn more about colleges that you may not have heard of before. It might be worthwhile to read up on colleges that you wouldn't initially consider — you just may find yourself intrigued by the student perspectives. Take advantage of the opening features of the book — they are designed to help you zero in on schools that meet your search criteria. You can also explore these beginning sections to learn what is unique and important about schools you are already considering. We encourage all these approaches. Above all, we hope that the Guide is fun to read, educational, and a useful aid in helping to make the college selection process less stressful.

While our Editors' Choice lists use a mix of statistics and subjectivity to provide an alternative perspective on the schools we include, we have avoided the temptation to pigeonhole the colleges with some kind of catchall rating system, or worse, to numerically rank them from first to last. Our reason is that the "best" college for one person may come near the bottom of the list for another. Each student has his or her own particular set of wants and needs, so it would be impossible for us to objectively rank the schools from "best" to "worst." Whereas most rankings focus solely on academic factors, the college experience is a balance of academics, social life, extracurricular activities, and much more.

Even so, some may wonder why we don't rate the colleges solely on the basis of academic quality. We think that attempting to come up with such a ranking is both impossible and undesirable. There are too many variables — from the many factors that contribute to the quality of a department and school as a whole to the articulateness and accessibility of the professor who happens to be your academic advisor. Furthermore, it's useless to try to compare a college of 2,000 students with a university of 10,000 (or a university of 10,000 with a state school of 40,000 for that matter) on any basis other than individual preference. Despite these reasons not to, some reportedly reputable sources such as national magazines often insist on publishing numerical rankings of colleges. We advise you not to take these lists too seriously. Oftentimes the determining factor in the rankings is a statistic such as "percent of alumni who donate money," something that means very little to most college applicants.

For over 40 years, The Insider's Guide has been dedicated to the belief that the best rankers of schools are students themselves, not magazine writers. Our goal, therefore, is to help you train your eye so you can select the college that is best for you. Remember, we may describe, explain, interpret, and report — but in the end, the choice is always yours.

Getting In

Applying to college can seem as intimidating as reading through this thick book, but neither should be a chore. In the spring of your sophomore year of high school, your Aunt Doris, whom you have not seen in seven years, pinches your cheek and asks you where you are going to college. "How the heck should I know," you think to yourself. That fall, your mom tells you that the girl down the street with the 4.0 grade point average is taking the SAT prep course for the fifth time to see if she can get a perfect score and win thousands in scholarship money. You reply that you are late for school. You keep ducking the subject, but the hints come with increasing regularity. Not only...