College Dialogue Home Page
Last Updated 08/22/06
Text Resources for College Selection Information


Objective college profile books give you the basic facts about colleges: number of students, majors, admissions data, housing information, cost, addresses. A number of publishers put them out, and they all have about the same data. Some examples of objective profile books are:
College Board College Handbook Kaplan’s College Catalogue
Peterson’s College Review Lovejoy’s College Guide

Subjective college profile books are a bit more controversial- and more useful. Usually based on questionnaires distributed to students, professors, administrators, and deans, the profiles in these books are an attempt to characterize the aspects of a college that cannot be quantified: social atmosphere, academic pressure and competition, quality of housing, food, attitudes of students and faculty. If you use these books, make sure to read a number of them; don’t take one book’s word for it. Some examples of subjective profile books are:

The Fiske Guide to Colleges Princeton Review’s Guide
Yale’s Insider’s Guide to Colleges Cool Colleges
College’s That Changed Lives The Public Ivy’s
There are other guidebooks that help students understand the entire process. These resources have been quite useful to several students. Some recommended titles are:
Colleges That Change Lives by Lauren Pope.
The College Admissions Mystique by Bill Mayher

In addition to these titles we have a collection of books that may be checked out from the resource room or Miss Bogan's office, please stop by to check them out.

College Catalogues contain the most definitive source of information about a college. These are college specific and are mailed to you when you request information from the college. (We also keep a collection in the office.) These catalogues contain information about the school calendar, the academic policies, the professors, and specific course and major information.

Videos and CD’s are readily available and can give you a visual image of the campus and the general student body. It seems that on a promotional video every day is sunny and every student is smiling, however, these are often useful tools to get an idea of what the campus looks like.  There is a check-out system in the College Resource Room in the IMC for your reference.  If there is not one available for the school you are looking at, first ascertain whether there is an online virtual tour and if not, please see Miss Bogan to order a video of the shool which you wish to look at further.