There's an even better guide out -- it's called something like "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Colleges". I can't remember for sure, because daughter passed on her library of college application books to her younger friends.
You can't rely on just one source - you have to cast your nets wide.
But the most important thing (once you've narrowed down your choices to 5 schools or so) is to VISIT - and visit as incognito as you can. Daughter and I would arrive quietly and unannounced on the campus, dressed as much like everybody else as we could manage, and just wander around. Sit in the student union and have lunch, nose around the library stacks, park on a bench outside an open classroom door, sit under a tree and watch and listen to the people. Do they look happy and engaged? Harried? Anxious? Are they busy? Are the professors visible and interacting with the kids? We learned more in our time just hanging around than we did on the 'official' guided tours, class visits, etc. But of course those are valuable too, if only because they give you an idea of what the school finds important.
Daughter's a sophomore, and she is still VERY happy with her choice of school.
Here's an interesting article from the Washington Post.
The title is :
Which College Guides Are the Best
Excerpt :
"The ones I used most often were "The Best 331 Colleges" by the Princeton Review and "The Unofficial, Biased Insider's Guide to the 320 Most Interesting Colleges" by Trent Anderson and Seppy Basili of Kaplan Inc. (and as for MY potential bias, it must be said that Kaplan is a very important part of The Washington Post Co., my employer and the company in which a substantial portion of my retirement savings are invested.)
Those two books were fun to read, with jazzy writing and useful rankings of various sorts, such as Princeton Review's playful surveys of which schools were most likely to have "Dorms Like Dungeons" (the State University of New York at Buffalo, my boss's alma mater, was number one) and which tended to admit "Students Most Nostalgic for Bill Clinton" (Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., led that category)."
Just FYI.
Personally, I found this guide to be the
BEST OVERALL :
This guide actually profiles the colleges IN DETAIL including the students, faculty and core curriculum.