(++++) KNOW, THEN GO

The Best 389 Colleges, 2024. By Robert Franek with David Soto, Stephen Koch, Aaron Riccio, Laura Rose, and the staff of The Princeton Review. Princeton Review/Penguin Random House. $26.99.

     Inflation is everywhere these days. For example, “bracket creep” is the insidious means by which slight increases in one’s taxable income suddenly result in a higher tax rate – an issue especially to be feared in inflationary times (except when elements of taxation are indexed for inflation and therefore unaffected by it). Something like bracket creep also affects the annual, encyclopedic Princeton Review guide to colleges: the 2024 edition features 389 colleges, up from 388 in the 2023 version, 387 for 2022, 386 in 2021, and 385 for 2020. The book’s price has inflated, too: to $26.99, up from $24.99 a year ago.

     Of course, in the grand scheme of things, given the cost of attending college, the slight price rise is inconsequential, the important thing being that these books have been appearing for three decades and have long since established themselves as go-to volumes for students and their families as they try to figure out a good fit for learning, personal growth, and – not to be forgotten – finances. There is really no “best” college for everyone, but anyone who wants to go to college can surely find a good match, if not within these books then outside them: there are 5,000-plus schools of higher education in the United States alone, only 7% of which are presented here.

     The presentation itself is formulaic – in a good way that makes cross-comparison among schools very simple. Each school gets a two-page spread with far-left and far-right columns giving statistical details on students, academics, majors, selectivity, deadlines and finances. The remaining space on both pages is narrative, divided into sections headlined “Students Say,” “The Princeton Review Says,” and “The School Says.” The first of these gives student comments on academics, campus life and the student body as a whole; the second has suggestions and recommendations for making the application process to that specific school go smoothly; and the third gives the school an opportunity for some self-serving PR. This last is best taken with several grains of salt and is most useful when juxtaposed with the comments by students on the facing page. For example, the administration at Swarthmore College says the school “empowers students to intertwine academic curiosity with social responsibility and a sense of purpose.” The quoted students say the campus “is very diverse racially but not in terms of thought – in other words, pretty much everyone’s liberal, you don’t get many different points of view.” This is the sort of thing that can actually make it easier for prospective students to determine if they would be comfortable at a given campus.

     To pick another school at random, the administration at University of Dallas says “our curriculum is designed to provide students with wisdom, knowledge, and skills that can be applied to all areas of life – intellectual, professional, spiritual and personal.” Students say their peers “have a genuine interest in being faithful people and growing in their spiritual lives,” and one comments, “I haven’t walked away from a conversation without smiling.” Again, potential students will find this official-vs.-experiential contrast quite helpful in looking for a good academic and personal fit.

     Also as helpful in the 2024 book as in prior ones are the many lists that can make the thick volume (more than 850 oversize pages) bearable rather than overwhelming. Students who are unsure of their future major but who know more or less what geographical area they would like to live in during college can turn to the back of the book for lists by state – actually an interesting exercise for anyone using the book, since it shows that the editors present only two colleges each in Arizona and Kansas, one each in Delaware and Idaho, but 26 in Massachusetts and 29 in Pennsylvania. Families interested in areas that appear under-represented in the main book can check the “2024 Best Regional Colleges” list, which includes 245 schools not explored in the main part of the volume – including, among others, five in Kansas and two in Idaho.

     Students who do have a pretty good idea of their preferred course of study will do better at the start of the book than at the end: they can consult the “Great Schools” lists for majors from A (accounting, agriculture) to P (political science, psychology). These lists make good starting points for more-in-depth study of the focuses on individual colleges within the main portion of the book. Another section definitely worth consulting is the back-of-book “Index of Schools by Tuition,” which may be eye-opening for some and an excellent means of narrowing choices for others.

     Every edition of The Best However Many Colleges We Are Listing This Year (well, that’s what it should be called) offers multiple ways to sort and use the data provided so exhaustively (and, for readers, potentially enhaustingly). Like its predecessors, The Best 389 Colleges, 2024 is most aptly seen as a starting point, a chance to understand the expectations of the colleges it includes and, based on that understanding, either to select some to which to apply – or to decide to look into the thousands that it does not include. The book will be most useful for students and families that want to focus on the specific colleges it profiles but are able to keep in mind that there is nothing sacrosanct about the schools included here.