From the award-winning insiders at Washington Monthly an essential handbook that demystifies and illuminates the American college process for the rest of us - a new kind of college guide chock-full of the hard-to-find information that students and parents really want to know.

The author of the best-selling What the Best College Teachers Do is back with more humane, doable, and inspiring help, this time for students who want to get the most out of college—and every other educational enterprise, too. The first thing they should do? Think beyond the transcript. The creative, successful people profiled in this book—college graduates who went on to change the world we live in—aimed higher than straight A’s. They used their four years to cultivate habits of thought that would enable them to grow and adapt throughout their lives. Combining academic research on learning and motivation with insights drawn from interviews with people who have won Nobel Prizes, Emmys, fame, or the admiration of people in their field, Ken Bain identifies the key attitudes that distinguished the best college students from their peers. These individuals started out with the belief that intelligence and ability are expandable, not fixed. This led them to make connections across disciplines, to develop a “meta-cognitive” understanding of their own ways of thinking, and to find ways to negotiate ill-structured problems rather than simply looking for right answers. Intrinsically motivated by their own sense of purpose, they were not demoralized by failure nor overly impressed with conventional notions of success. These movers and shakers didn’t achieve success by making success their goal. For them, it was a byproduct of following their intellectual curiosity, solving useful problems, and taking risks in order to learn and grow.

Prospective college students and their parents have been relying on Loren Pope's expertise since 1995, when he published the first edition of this indispensable guide. This new edition profiles 41 colleges—all of which outdo the Ivies and research universities in producing performers, not only among A students but also among those who get Bs and Cs. Contents include: Evaluations of each school's program and "personality" Candid assessments by students, professors, and deans Information on the progress of graduates This new edition not only revisits schools listed in previous volumes to give readers a comprehensive assessment, it also addresses such issues as homeschooling, learning disabilities, and single-sex education.

Make sure you’re preparing with the most up-to-date materials! Look for The Princeton Review’s newest edition of this book, The Best 388 Colleges, 2023 Edition (ISBN: 9780593450963, on-sale August 2022). Publisher's Note: Products purchased from third-party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality or authenticity, and may not include access to online tests or materials included with the original product.

Make sure you’re preparing with the most up-to-date materials! Look for The Princeton Review’s newest edition of this book, The Best 387 Colleges, 2022 (ISBN: 9780525570820, on-sale August 2021). Publisher's Note: Products purchased from third-party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality or authenticity, and may not include access to online tests or materials included with the original product.

The fevered controversy over America's educational future isn't simply academic; those who have proposed sweeping reforms include government officials, politicians, foundation officers, think-tank researchers, journalists, media pundits, and university administrators. Drowned out in that noisy debate are the voices of those who actually teach the liberal arts exclusively to undergraduates in our nation's small liberal arts colleges, or SLACs. The Best Kind of College attempts to rectify that glaring oversight. As an insiders' "guide" to the liberal arts in its truest form the volume brings together thirty award-winning professors from across the country to convey in various ways some of the virtues, the electricity, and, overall, the importance of the small-seminar, face-to-face approach to education, as typically featured in SLACs. Before we in the United States abandon or compromise our commitment to the liberal arts—oddly enough, precisely at a time when our global competitors are discovering, emulating, and founding American-style SLACs and new liberal arts programs—we need a wake-up call, namely to the fact that the nation's SLACs provide a time-tested model of educational integrity and success.

Why we need to stop wasting public funds on education Despite being immensely popular—and immensely lucrative—education is grossly overrated. Now with a new afterword by Bryan Caplan, this explosive book argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skills but to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As only to forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for average workers, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy. Romantic notions about education being "good for the soul" must yield to careful research and common sense—The Case against Education points the way.

Drawing on decades of research, Karabel shines a light on the ever-changing definition of "merit" in college admissions, showing how it shaped--and was shaped by--the country at large.

The distinctive group of forty colleges profiled here is a well-kept secret in a status industry. They outdo the Ivies and research universities in producing winners. And they work their magic on the B and C students as well as on the A students. Loren Pope, director of the College Placement Bureau, provides essential information on schools that he has chosen for their proven ability to develop potential, values, initiative, and risk-taking in a wide range of students. Inside you'll find evaluations of each school's program and personality to help you decide if it's a community that's right for you; interviews with students that offer an insider's perspective on each college; professors' and deans' viewpoints on their school, their students, and their mission; and information on what happens to the graduates and what they think of their college experience. Loren Pope encourages you to be a hard-nosed consumer when visiting a college, advises how to evaluate a school in terms of your own needs and strengths, and shows how the college experience can enrich the rest of your life.