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THE ESSENTIAL COLLEGE SURVIVAL HANDBOOK by Ralph & Valerie Carnes Carnes

THE ESSENTIAL COLLEGE SURVIVAL HANDBOOK

By

Pub Date: July 31st, 1981
Publisher: Playboy--dist. by Harper & Row

Some general information on the college-admission process, some general advice on improving your chances (the book's first third), plus lots and lots of gabble on how to get ready and what to do when you get there (the remaining two-thirds). Exactly who the Carneses are writing for is one of the book's mysteries; they directly address, in turn, the applicant, the newly-admitted, the just-enrolled, and so on. Or do they think that the book will be read a few chapters at a time? Even that wouldn't solve the further problem of just who needs, or wants, to be told umpteen ways to spruce up college living-quarters (""Could the hideous coffee table or lamp stands be painted a deep lacquer-red burgundy or hunter's green?"") or to plod through pages of similar drivel on assembling a college wardrobe. And probably the most useful advice the Carneses give college students is to see their advisers regularly--that way they'll be able to claim, if anything goes wrong, that they got the wrong advice. There are also a few questionable tips: to the dormitory bound, guard against rip-offs by installing ""your own burglar alarm or burglar bars if possible""; to men having trouble meeting women, ""write to the Playboy Advisor, or look into the library's collection of Playboy magazines"" for the Advisor column. (That's not the only plug, either, for the services of the book's publisher.) The concluding chapter purports to tell ""the way that universities really work""--and not only outlines, sensibly, what a dean does but sketches in some standard professorial ""types."" All this, the Carneses think, will help make college the-time-of-your-life. It's one time, anyhow, when there's more to do than read idle words like these.