Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges Book

Colleges That Change Lives is an important contribution to the ongoing conversation about college choice, and when it was published, it was somewhat revolutionary. Readers get a sense of the college landscape circa 1996, and certainly gain an understanding of the author's biases toward "good, small colleges."

Yet Pope displays his age when he makes comments like lauding (in paraphrase) a feisty girl who wrote comments to the college administration...in CHALK...on the SIDEWALK!...but it's all okay since the rain washes them away. He writes glowingly of week-long freshmen orientation periods in the summer before entering college, and unified freshmen programs, but fails to realize these sorts of things are extremely common among many colleges (including the demonized large state universities) and not just his favored few.

Many points remain salient, such as looking at the number of future Ph.D.s that a college produces, or percent of women in the science fields, but he fails to let us know where we can find out that information for ourselves for colleges that aren't in the book. And even for those 40, his numbers are either very old (1996) or getting older (the mid-2000s edition).

In short, it's well worth a read if you have any interest whatsoever about college choice. But it's more of a polemic instead of the academic study that the author pretends.