A clear and practical resource, intelligently structured.
A brief but comprehensive instruction manual for applying to college.
Filling out college applications can be an exasperating affair, especially since the stakes are so high, and students are forced to guess what admissions officers are looking for. Debut authors Craig and Kramer attempt to simplify the process by providing insight into the admissions officer’s mind and by walking the prospective student through each step of a college application. They distinguish between admissions and scholarship applications. For the former, they use the widely accepted Common Application as their model, and for the latter, the application for the Boettcher Foundation, for which Kramer serves as CEO. The guide begins with the preparations one can take in the first semester of freshman year of high school and then walks through multiple steps until graduation. The authors cover a lot of ground in such a short book—they discuss the different kinds of deadlines, how to efficiently reuse various parts of one college application for other applications, and how to craft effective essays. For example, they teach candidates how to extol their strengths without seeming arrogant. They also furnish various resources for financial counsel and support. Numerous sample essays are provided with editorial comments about their virtues and vices. Further, there is a wealth of advice about how to not only sell one’s quirky individuality as an asset, but also mitigate the damage done by poor grades or even by a record of disciplinary action. It’s remarkable how much useful information is packed into such a condensed manual—all delivered in mercifully accessible prose. Also, the authors’ meticulousness is notable—the organization of the book makes following its prescriptions easy and should go a long way toward unburdening the applicant of both tedium and nervousness. Both Craig and Kramer are veterans of professional education with a wealth of experience assessing applications, and that expertise is unmistakably present in this volume, which every parent should buy for their college-bound child.
A clear and practical resource, intelligently structured.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5488-6052-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
