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| Looking Beyond the Ivy League: Finding the College That's Right for You | 
 enlarge | Author: Loren Pope
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $8.61
You Save: $6.39 (43%)
Buy New/Used from $8.56
Avg. Customer Rating:  (25 reviews)
Sales Rank: 40564
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.6
ISBN: 0143112821
Dewey Decimal Number: 378.10560973
EAN: 9780143112822
ASIN: 0143112821
Publication Date: December 18, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Steer clear of this outdated guide April 6, 2006
6 out of 17 found this review helpful
Read the first paragraph in the book and then run. Pope's argument can be stated in a single sentence: small, liberal arts colleges throughout the U.S. can provide an excellent education. However, he ruins his credibility by using weak logic, meaningless examples, and very outdated personal research. It's like listening to your dad's retired guidance counselor thumping his fist on your desk, spitting, "The Ivy League stinks." Let's face it: the Ivies are great and small liberal arts schools can be great, too. It's all a matter of finding the right match, but Pope won't help you do that. Buy any other guide and you'll be better off.
 The best kept secret September 2, 2005
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
As a guidance teacher, I always recommend Loren Pope's books because I believe they are a wonderful guide for aspiring young Americans. I also run West Point via Norman Thomas Remick's book, "West Point----", past aspiring young Americans. It is an all scholarship college, but don't let that scare you. Though West Point is 4th out of thousands of colleges in total Rhodes Scholars behind only Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, you can get in if, as Loren Pope says, the Admissions Dept at West Point thinks it is right for you, even if you're not a straight A student. And if you think it is right for you based on much of the criteria that Loren Pope so aptly presents in "Looking Beyond the Ivy League", plus the answer to "why West Point" in the Remick book, you could find that this is the best kept secret. Be sure to read Loren Pope's "Looking Beyond the Ivy League" first for overall perspective. Then check out West Point via the Remick book.
The Proof is in the Pudding November 30, 2004
45 out of 45 found this review helpful
My daughters, now 23 and 25 both used this book as the cornerstone of their college searches. Both chose colleges neither had heard of before, Hampshire College and Earlham College. Both schools were exactly right for both of them, and both girls followed Mr. Pope's advice in their selection process.
When visiting colleges they went when school was in session, attended classes, spent the night, had a student mentor (not a freshman) and ate in the dorm. One daughter visited an exhausting 12 schools, the other only 2 before she felt she had found her soul mate (Earlham). The daughter who picked Hampshire did so because she needs freedom to explore many venues, but the closeness of a small school community. At Hampshire she could attend any of the 5 school consortium at no additional tuition costs. So if Hampshire didn't have the exact class she wanted, she could use the free and frequent busses that run between the schools to take classes at Smith, Mt. Holyoke, University of Mass or Amherst.
The best thing about Mr. Pope's advice and bias on choosing a small school is that it's true. Not only do you get the small class size and individual attention of dedicated and well educated professors, but you have almost unlimited opportunities to explore social issues, sports, the arts and global society through personal involvement than most students at state schools.
In talking to peers who attended the oft chosen bigger schools, my girls found they had written more critical papers in one semester at their schools than friends had written in 4 years! At Earlham my daughter got to sing in the schools traveling performance choir for a semester in Vienna and Europe, be a teacher's assistant in German for a semester in Germany, live in a "Friendship" house, be a "featured artist" of the week in the school paper, play rugby for fun, write her first and second grant proposals and be able to successfully execute them.
The second daughter got to co-edit the school paper for a year and then resurrected the school's Literary Journal. Spent a summer in Bolivia writing for a paper owned by an alumni. She got to work in public radio, travel cross country researching her senior thesis, take horticulture at Smith and advanced Spanish at Amherst.
In small liberal arts colleges you don't have to be a "state champion" to play volleyball or football or rugby. You don't have to have ever had a voice lesson in order to sing in a choir and gain the skills you need to get into a performance choir. You can dream of being at the inaugural parade in Washington DC and the school provides transportation and teaches you how to be a socially responsible, safe protester who effectively gets a message across during a protest without offending (or getting arrested). You make friends and have a community that includes your professors. Friends you will keep for life.
Somewhere in one of Mr. Pope's two books he says something to the effect that the job you will have in 10 years probably does not exist right now, and that by having a liberal arts education a student is prepared to go out into the world and adapt and to continue learning while the world changes around them. That's exactly what my daughters are doing.
One, who majored in Art and German is living in Japan and teaching English for two years (and becoming fluent in a third language). Her student loans will be paid off in 2 years with a tidy nest egg stashed away for grad school. The other, who majored in non-fiction writing is now back in school preparing for grad school in library science with an emphases in the arts and art history. Neither are where they imagined they would be when they were 18 and looking ahead. Because they had the advantage of reading Mr. Pope's books, they certainly have had a much more interesting and fulfilling life and education than they would have had they followed the "herd" out of high school.
And yes, Mr. Pope's book and specific school recommendations need updating. Antioch College is a drug den, crumbling, graffiti sprawled and fading blip on the colligate radar screen that shouldn't even be in the phone book, much less this book. But overall, of the 14 colleges we visited, all seemed to deserve their recommendation.
Based on Mr. Pope's personal recommendations (I called and talked to him) we did find that financial aid was plentiful and at almost all schools the financial aid package would have (and did) made the small private schools as inexpensive as state schools. The value of this book's contrarian viewpoint outweighs the fact that the specific school information needs updating. That's why I gave it 5 stars but hope that Mr. Pope has another, better revision coming along.
 Good, but contradictory June 12, 2004
I read this book after reading Mr. Pope's other book, "Colleges that Change Lives". I think this is a much better book, particularly in giving more detailed information on selecting a college in general. The other book was very skimpy on general information and consisted primarily of college profiles. I still have some issues with Mr. Pope's small (some might say tiny) school bias. At least here he provides more background as to why he believes what he believes. And the list of schools (though lacking in any depth), does contain a lot of larger (5000+) schools. If nothing else, Mr. Pope's two books are important -- they were pretty much the first books to take on the "Ivy League or Bust" mentality that seemed to mushroom out of control in the 60's and 70's. For that alone he deserves praise -- just take some of his diatribes with a grain of salt.
sappy little book December 28, 2003
7 out of 50 found this review helpful
This is a sappy little book with a propagandistic quality to it. I resented buying it. I prefer Choosing the right College by the conservative outfit (published by Eerdman's, 2000) whose name I forget. I am not conservative, but they at least have a viewpoint. This is just mindless trash that reiterates whatever the school has told him.Garbage for pumpkin heads.
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