Saturday College Book Club: College Match: A Blueprint for Choosing the Best College for You, by Steven R. Antonoff, PhD

““Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland 

 Just how do you begin the college admissions process? By developing a good college list, full of schools that fit you perfectly! College Match: A Blueprint for Choosing the Best School for You is essentially a college-counseling program between two covers. Author Dr. Steven R. Antonoff, a former Dean of Admissions at the University of Denver, has packed his book with quizzes and worksheets that allow high school juniors and seniors to examine their values and self-knowledge to reflect on exactly what they want in a school, narrow their criteria and then compare and contrast schools to add to their college list.

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This is a classic. We have based the college-counseling curriculum at our school around Antonoff's College Match.

What I like most about College Match is that it is a very practical book. Most college admissions guides assume you already know what schools you want to apply to. Databases like Big Future allow you to search for schools matching specific criteria. But what if you don’t know if a large school or a small school appeals to you? How does the average high school junior assess the academic offerings at the various schools? Antonoff to the rescue! He discusses fifteen qualities or characteristics of colleges in detail, pointing out pros and cons, and allows students to make some informed decisions about what they want. Then, when they visit Big Future or one of the other databases, they can quickly find colleges that fit their criteria, confident that the schools they find will be the right ones.

Dr. Antonoff is an expert in college fit. He is also the author of College Finder, a book of lists of colleges with various criteria: Colleges for arts students, Colleges that Build Moral Character, Homeschool-friendly Colleges, etc. His lists have recently been incorporated into the CollegeXPress website, so can also be accessed there. Some of the quizzes in the book can be downloaded as pdf from his website, SchoolBuff.com, so you can try before you buy. However, College Match has been an admissions mainstay for twenty years, so you’d be hard-pressed to find a better book to spend $12 on!

How about you? Have you used College Match? What did you think?