Rachel Weisel | Lies and the lying guidebooks that publish them

It's that time of year again. With admissions decisions fast approaching, high-school seniors all over the country and across the world are scrambling to figure out where they're going to attend college next fall.

This also means the new college guidebooks are out for 2007. I decided to read up on what the "experts" had to say about Dear Old Penn.

Browsing through college guidebooks in a University bookstore definitely earned me some puzzled stares.

Kaplan, Princeton Review, U.S. News and World Report. These prestigious names that I once revered now seemed so distant and insignificant. They opened the floodgates to painful memories of standardized testing, tedious essays and paralyzing indecision.

Standing there, it was hard for me to fathom how I once could have believed that the answer to my future rested inside of a book.

But curiosity got the best of me as I wondered what it would be like to revisit one of these books through the lens of a current Penn student. I was anxious to find out how my Penn would compare to the official opinions.

What I found is something I wish I had realized 12 months ago.

Of course, all of the books mention classic Penn traditions and landmarks, like Hey Day, Spring Fling and the Button. They all glorify the Quad and attack the food. Princeton Review's Best 361 Colleges even provides stereotypes for each of the undergraduate schools: "Brainy engineer, ambitious Wharton student, artsy College kid, hardworking nurse."

But beyond throwing toast at Franklin Field and receiving flyers on Locust Walk, I'm not sure that the real Penn shines through in any one of these books. Something is missing, between the lines.

While each book claims to present the behind-the-scenes view or the inside scoop, most of the information offered could easily apply to any college.

A lot of the content is inconclusive or contradictory. For instance, College Prowler's The Big Book of Colleges '07 offers a variety of student opinions about categories such as facilities, professors and overall experience.

One student said, of Penn professors, "I think the professors have taught directly from the book. Many times I've felt like I could just skip going to class . and still be able to keep up with what was going on." Another commented "Generally, I think the professors do a good job of trying to keep the classes interesting and engaging."

No wonder I was completely confused and distraught during this whole process. With the information I had to work with, it's amazing to me that I ended up choosing a school at all.

Naturally, the most important and unique qualities (both the good and the bad) of our institution cannot be neatly summarized, categorized or packaged into any guide or handbook.

No book could have convinced me last year that after I stopped complaining about the smallness of my room, I would come to love my hall because the people there would matter more than the space (or lack thereof).

No expert could have explained that I would sometimes have to use the weekends to catch up on homework instead of sleep, and that The O.C. and Desperate Housewives would have to wait. No guide could have conveyed that my idea of a fun night would unexpectedly become staying up until six in the morning just talking to people.

What I hope prospective students will realize is that these books cannot really capture the essence of a school. At best they may provide a snapshot of student life, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

I have learned that no matter how much you read about a school, even if you visit it, you can never really understand what it's truly like until you get there. The only absolute in the equation is that it will be different than what you expect.

While most of us feel far-removed from the agonizing college application process, we all experienced it once. Many of us will go through similar processes again when applying to graduate school schools in the near future.

The old me would have checked U.S. News and World Report's official college rankings, just to see if Penn was still stuck at number seven (we are). But the new me knows that it's not about the rankings anymore. So here's a little something I will now keep in mind: Don't judge a college by its book.

Rachel Weisel is a College freshman from Chesterfield, Missouri. Her e-mail address is weisel@dailypennsylvanian.com. Writes of Passage appears on Fridays.

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