High schoolers deluged with info on colleges

Like many high school seniors, Kim Row has waded through scores of books and Internet sites this fall, assessing thousands of colleges and universities.

Her conclusions:

• College students almost always give their own school bad grades.

• Guidebook authors seem to use the word "beautiful" to describe every American campus. "Of course a campus is beautiful," said Row, of Maryville, Tenn. "But what makes it different?"

• Guidebooks and Web sites can help a student narrow the field of colleges, but it's a mistake to rely on them too much.

Experts agree, particularly since there is an ever-growing array of guides that offer admissions advice and rate schools on almost any criterion — academics, parties, even a Web site devoted to the quantity and quality of squirrels on the nation's campuses (it's called The Campus Squirrel Listings). The sheer number of guides can be intimidating.

Nearly 125 overflowed two shelves at a New York City bookstore recently, including both heavyweights (the 3,109-page "Peterson's Four-year Colleges, 2004") and those that appeal to lightweights ("The Idiot's Guide to College Survival").

There are selections that show students how to write an essay that will get the attention of the Harvard admissions office. And, for the less-ambitious, how to gain entry to a "near Ivy" school.

Dozens of books offer advice on how to pay for a college education — though "How to Go to College Almost for Free" seems the logical choice.

Still, for all the efforts by publishers to set their books apart, the guides are often consulted but rarely purchased, said Suzy Staubach, manager of the University of Connecticut bookstore.

"They are among the more shopworn books in the store," she said.

When former reporter Edward Fiske began editing what is now called the "Fiske Guide to Colleges" in the early 1980s, he shared space on bookstore shelves with only a handful of competitors.

At the time, the last of the baby boomers were starting college, and schools were stepping up marketing campaigns to attract a declining number of high school graduates.

"It occurred to me that somebody needed to come in on the side of the consumer to cut through the hyperbole," Fiske said.