Loren Pope's Colleges that Change Lives

This little (by guidebook standards) volume covers only forty schools, but it is essential reading for today's college-bound students. Pope makes the reader rethink the logic behind college selection, and the elite universities come out the losers in the process.

So many of the college guidebooks out there focus on so-called "top" schools -- those schools with the prestigious names and remarkably high admissions standards. Loren Pope's Colleges That Change Lives looks at education in terms of a school's value to the student, not in terms of SAT scores, endowments, and acceptance rates.

The result is a book that helps readers rethink what it is that they are investing in when making decisions about college. Is it an education or a school's name? For Pope, the education comes first.

For anyone despairing about not having the scores to get into the Ivy League, this book is essential reading. For anyone who is applying to elite universities, this book is worth a read to help you make an informed decision about the path of your education.

The book does have its biases, and some of the trash talk about Harvard and other elite schools is not fully justified. Nevertheless, Pope does add an important counter-argument to the myths surrounding the likes of Harvard and Stanford, and he is certainly correct when he argues that there are some great but lesser-known schools in the United States.