Being the mother of a college junior and a high school senior, I’ve bought and skimmed through a lot of college books over the years. Many of them disappoint me because they are often focused on getting kids into the Ivy League. This fixation is ridiculously misplaced when you consider that only .2% of kids attend these eight schools.
Frankly, I’m not impressed with most college guides, but today I want to share with you a college book that I can enthusiastically endorse:
The 75 Biggest Myths About College Admissions: Stand out From the Pack, Avoid Mistakes, and Get Into the College Of Your Dreams by Jerry Israel, a former university president.
The 75 Biggest Myths About College Admissions is extremely helpful because it addresses the needs of all teenagers intent on attending college — not just the braniacs. I found it to be an incredibly helpful book because of this empowering message:
When shopping for colleges, high school students and their parents enjoy far more bargaining power than they realize. Colleges need and want good kids — even if they don’t have 4.0 GPA’s and killer SAT scores. In many ways, it’s a buyer’s market.
The key, of course, is to find solid academic and financial fits and Israel, who is the former president of the University of Indianapolis, provides lots of suggestions.
Israel doesn’t name any specific institutions in his book, which is one of the reasons why I think my own title, The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price, complements it. My book shares the same educational philosophy, but it also names names. I provide real examples, for instance, of how colleges decide who will receive the best aid packages and who won’t. I also mention the names of schools in the chapters that I devote to explaining how families can truly evaluate schools as well as departments within them.
I’d argue that if you read both of these college books, you’ll know more than probably 99% of the families out there. End of plug!