thanks for this post! my oldest son is 13—eighth grade... been looking into colleges for him... i am going to get the book Thomas Sowell recommends...
I did a quick check earlier at Barnes & Noble and they list it at $25.00, well worth it, IMO.
I would recommend getting several books, not just one, and also making use of the high school college counselors. Assuming that they are doing the job with enthusiasm, they are very well connected and have a good idea of which of their students will do well at a particular school. I also found collegeboard.com helpful. Your college counselor can give your son a password to access the restricted portions of that site. It has a good search program to narrow down the list of colleges you're interested in by location (urban/suburban/small town/rural), class size, selectivity, courses offered, etc.)
If you use ALL these aids you will generally wind up with a RANGE of recommendations. But you will start to see the same names turning up over and over again.
Our game plan was to narrow down our list to five: one "safe" school (i.e. one she would be happy attending but which we were pretty sure she would get in and get some scholarship money), one "reach" school (one that her chances of getting in were not good but, hey, she might), and three schools that she wanted to attend and most likely would be admitted. We visited those five schools (except the "reach" school which she really wasn't all that keen on), several more than once, and she decided on her favorite.
Fortunately she was admitted to all four, got money offers from three, and got wait listed at the 'reach' school. Since she wasn't really all that keen on it, we struck it from the list and visited the three middle schools again before she made her final decision.
She loves the school, has made decent grades and a lot of friends, and has decided to pursue a career in field biology. (Me, I like air conditioning and dry feet!)