Mamlet, a former dean of admissions at a number of well-known universities, teams up with journalist and parent VanDeVelde to create a practical and easy-to-understand primer on college admissions.
“We’ll have the best advice, strategies, and recommendations for you, whether you want to attend your state university, a midsized college, or a small liberal arts school,” the authors write in the first chapter. Those looking to stake their claim to an Ivy League spot will find instruction here as well, but the authors warn that the path will be steeper. Starting off with an overview of the application process, replete with statistics, the authors draw upon their combined 23 years experience in college admissions to demystify an often overwhelming procedure. Their broad yet intricately detailed guide is intended for both parents and students alike and touches on everything from testing to interviews to financial aid. The most anxiety-inducing part of the process, penning a college essay, is dissected down to the cellular level, including a helpful schematic on how to organize essay drafts and include relevant personal information. Appendices include a four-year timeline of the process and recommended courses of study. Resources for a variety of students, including those who are undocumented and those considering a gap year, are also provided. Jittery high-school seniors would be wise to take a deep breath and repeat after Mamlet and VanDeVelde: “Getting into college is not rocket science. It’s a lot of work, but it can be done.” They’re here to show readers how.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-59032-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
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