Competitive Colleges is a selective college guide of 401 chosen colleges and universities with entering-class statistics indicating they routinely attract and admit an above-average share of the nation’s high-achieving students. Each institution has a full-page statistical profile. Sponsors are given the opportunity to have a 100-word announcement on the subject of their choice appear on their page…. More >>
#1 by Darshan on July 1, 2010 - 7:04 pm
I think Peterson’s Competitive Colleges is somewhat less successful than its rivals such as Princeton Review, Fiske, and Kaplan because the book is very dry and uninteresting. Some may appreciate that there is no student opinion to subjectively cloud a reader’s view of the schools. It’s almost entirely factual statistics although some schools have small self-promoting blurbs that are potentially helpful. Overall, you don’t get more information on each college than you do in Barron’s mammouth Profiles of American Colleges, and in Barron’s book, you get about 1200 more schools. Almost every page has some blank space so Peterson’s could do a little more to describe a school, but its policy seems to be “only the facts.”
(I should note that all of these books are far superior to US News & World Report’s annual rankings which does nothing but provide statistics that are re-calculated every year so they have something new to report. There is no way to ever know if US News was right last year or this year or if they will finally be right next year. I feel it’s an example of journalism at its worst.)
What are the good things about Peterson’s? The book is honest in that it calls itself “competitive colleges” as opposed to “best colleges”. It states pretty clearly that these schools admit above average students but doesn’t claim that every school in the book is a national powerhouse. Because of this Peterson’s has about 50 more colleges than Princeton Review and 70 to 100 more than Kaplan or Fiske. The good thing about this is that if you feel your academic record is only a bit above average, you will have more schools to choose from than the other books. The down side is that one might think that being in a book such as Peterson’s means a college will help you get a job, but you may find that there are a couple dozen schools here that a lot of employers haven’t heard of.
Peterson’s guide also has a very helpful section on figuring out what your financial aid situation will be. I also find their website to be a very good resource.
Peterson’s does a much better job than the other books with religiously-affiliated schools. Most of the schools that aren’t in the other books are Baptist, Catholic, nondenominational Christian, etc. If you are specifically interested in Christian schools, I think you’d do best with this book. However, if you buy Peterson’s, you’ll still get almost all the schools that the other guides cover. The one notable mainstream exception I can think of is Babson, a business college. A bit more glaring is the fact that Peterson’s only has one Historically Black College, Morehouse. I imagine Peterson’s would defend itself by saying that the strongest African American students often go to “mainstream” schools so Historically Black Colleges just aren’t that competitive. However, if you are interested in schools such as Howard, Fisk, Spelman, Tuskeegee, Hampton, Xavier of Louisiana and Florida A&M then some of the other books like Princeton Review will be far more helpful.
Rating: 3 / 5