Prospective students overrun with college guidebooks, rankings

Like many high school seniors, Kim Row has waded through scores of books and Internet sites this fall, assessing thousands of colleges and universities.

Her conclusions:

College students almost always give their own school bad grades.

Guidebook authors seem to use the word "beautiful" to describe every American campus. "Of course a campus is beautiful," said Row, of Maryville, Tenn. "But what makes it different?"

Guidebooks and Web sites can help a student narrow the field of colleges, but it's a mistake to rely on them too much.

Experts agree, particularly since there are an ever-growing array of guides that offer admissions advice and rate schools on almost any criterion -- academics, parties, even a Web site devoted to the quantity and quality of squirrels on the nation's campuses (it's called The Campus Squirrel Listings). The sheer number of guides can be intimidating.

Nearly 125 overflowed two shelves at a New York City bookstore recently, including both heavyweights (the 3,109-page "Peterson's Four-year Colleges, 2004") and those that appeal to lightweights ("The Idiot's Guide to College Survival").

There are selections that show students how to write an essay that will get the attention of the Harvard admissions office. And, for the less-ambitious, how to gain entry to a "near Ivy" school.

Dozens of books offer advice on how to pay for a college education -- though "How to Go To College Almost for Free" seems the logical choice.

Long shelf life

Still, for all the efforts by publishers to set their books apart, the guides are often consulted but rarely purchased, said Suzy Staubach, manager of the University of Connecticut bookstore.

"They are among the more shopworn books in the store," she said.

When former reporter Edward Fiske began editing what is now called the "Fiske Guide to Colleges" in the early 1980s, he shared space on bookstore shelves with only a handful of competitors.

At the time, the last of the baby boomers were starting college, and schools were stepping up marketing campaigns to attract a declining number of high school graduates.

"It occurred to me that somebody needed to come in on the side of the consumer to cut through the hyperbole," Fiske said.

But like the annual U.S. News and World Report college rankings that followed, Fiske's decision to informally rate schools drew fire from within higher education.

Two decades later, Paul Boyer -- author of "College Rankings Exposed" -- claims that the annual U.S. News survey and Fiske-like guides have turned choosing a college into a ratings game loathed -- but reluctantly embraced, nonetheless -- by higher education.

Affecting colleges

Boyer says colleges that disparage the influence of rankings and guidebooks on prospective students often turn around and quote laudatory attributes on their Web sites.

"Higher education is running around figuring how to win by the game of rankings, which does not encourage real innovation or commitment to learning," he said.

"Rather, it reinforces some of the most superficial changes in higher education by encouraging them to do whatever it takes to increase ... the applicant pool and increasing graduate research -- but not innovation in the undergraduate classroom. It's damaging at many levels and keeps getting worse every year."

Cynthia Freeman last year assigned her Senior Inquiry Class to read and then summarize the material for other students.

"They are lost in a sea of choices," Freeman said. Her students look to the guides to try and trim the field, she said.

Indeed, that's the case with Row, who knew she wanted to major in a science at a school outside Tennessee when she began consulting the Princeton Review's Web site. She is now waiting to learn if she has been accepted by Colgate University, her top choice.

Ultimately, said Row, a trip to the Colgate campus in Hamilton, N.Y., played a larger role in her decision than anything she read in print or online.

"A campus visit is better than any guidebook," she said.