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Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools You Should Know about Even If You're Not a Straight-A Student
by Loren Pope
304 pages (trade paperback)
Genre: Nonfiction/Education/College

My second read of this seminal college admissions text. I'm still annoyed by the uniformly positive reviews, but don't let that be a significant detractor. Pope is also a strident advocate for liberal arts colleges (LACs), perhaps the equivalent of Richard Dawkins in the (non-)religious world.

Since I've already talked about my thoughts, this time I'll written up a short description of all 40 schools covered and included information gleaned from my own research.

Cut for length )
keilexandra: Adorable panda with various Chinese overlays. (Default)
Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges
by Loren Pope
382 pages (trade paperback)
Genre: Nonfiction/Self-Help/College

I kept hearing about CTCL schools in my arcane Internet researches, so I decided to finally read Pope's famous book. It was interesting and very different from the norm in college guides; only 40 schools are profiled, as the title suggests, and each receives a long (5-7 pages) essay extolling its virtues. While I subscribe to the principle that prestige is worth very little, and I generally agree with Pope, I do think his method of persuasion is flawed. He writes almost nothing negative about any of the 40 colleges, so that they seem like bastions of perfection. Also, he wastes breath (or space, I suppose) reviling the elite schools--certainly they aren't perfect, but neither are they terrible, and a bit more endowment goes a long way in terms of financial aid and campus quality of life.

Nonetheless, this was a fascinating read and one that I recommend as a matter of course.

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Keix

January 2011

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