Colleges and Departments Books

I am not reading this book, I am just solving the problems and the practice tests, preparing for the GRE and I find this book is really annoying, because instead of helping me improving my math skills, I found myself improving Peterson's ability of math skills!

The book has many errors and many of them are definitely not printing mistakes, they are mathematically flaws.

I have contacted Peterson's about the errors and they provided me with a page of correction within the site of Peterson's, the page couldn't be opened! It seems that there isn't such a page.

I don't recommend this book to anyone.

I am using this book to study for the GMAT because it was the cheapest one available. But as I'm going through the problems and answers, I am finding a mistake on almost every page - in the problems and the answers. This makes it a little bit difficult for someone who is not very great at math to study and understand the concepts.

After many years in the workforce, I decided to pursue a graduate degree. The most significant hurdle was the GMAT. Writing and language are strengths for me, but for the past 18 years, I've let computers take care of quantitative issues. So, in short order I had to become reacquainted with math concepts long forgotten, and learn how to take a CAT exam and score reasonably well. All of my research led me to one conclusion: it takes more than one study guide to adequately prepare for the GMAT. The course I followed, with an evaluation of each guide, is outlined in the following paragraphs.

For my math review, I selected Peterson's Math Review for GRE, GMAT, and MCAT, 2nd edition. There have been some comments about errors in previous editions, but I found this guide quite helpful, and an excellent refresher on math topics I have not seen in years, but need to know for the GMAT. 4 out of 5.

The GMAT Advantage with Professor Dave was selected because of its readability and the questions. The material is challenging, and the more difficult questions in each category provide a good idea of the difficult questions faced on the GMAT. The verbal chapters are very strong and have excellent examples. The math problems are also very good, but the text assumes that the reader already is familiar with most math topics. This is why I recommend Peterson's MAth Review to compliment this guide. Overall 4 out of 5, with a solid 5 for the verbal sections.

The Official Guide for GMAT is the best resource for practice questions. 1400 questions are in this guide, and the last 1/3 in each section represent some difficult concepts that will be tested. This book gets the reader prepared for the real questions that will be seen on the exam. In addition, the question writers provide excellent explanations for the solutions, and reveal some elegantly simple ways to solve math problems that at first appear to be very labor intensive. 4 out of 5. (Also, be sure to take the 2 free CAT tests available online from GMAC. These prepare the user well for the GMAT experience.)

Finally, I also used the Princeton Review Crash Course for GMAT. I used this as a final review and to gain some additional pointers and time savers. While brief, this book does provide excellent quick reference tips for all question types that will be seen on the test. The idiom list and formulas are worth the price alone. 4 out of 5.

I prepared over an 8 week period, with at least 1 hour of review per day, and more often it was 2 to 4 hours. Regular, consistent preparation, using different references that fit your style of learning will prepare you for this rigorous test. Prepare thoroughly with relentless repetition, and take the test. After 18 years out of school, I scored a 690.

Good luck.

Since I aced the Quantitative section of the GRE, I feel compelled to convey to the World my most sincere gratitude to the makers of this book. This book comprehensively covers most of the aspects of the Quantitative Section of the GRE and greatly helps tp develop that keen sense of grasping the fundamentals of the subject which enables efficacious learning. Less than 8 weeks for the GRe get this book practice it and SCORE HIGH ON THE QUANTITATIVE SECTION.

This is a very good reference for those who want to apply to a business school. Besides giving the school profiles, which is very good, its very best part is its categories ranking that includes Academics, Pressure, Social Life, Facilities, among others. Very interenting.

The Best 75 Business School's new edition for 1999 looks at the schools from many perspectives. For more than 15 academic qualities it ranks the top 10 schools. It also ranks the schools from other perspectives. Overall if you look through the different qualities that are important for you, you end up with a list of schools that might fit you best. It also has the regular, information on each school.

Seventy-five schools are covered, each with a two-page overview highlighting basic statistics, comments by students, and informal 'rankings' of the three best and worst things about a particular school. Schools are *not* ranked against each other. There is a bunch of supplemental material describing the application process and some sample 'good' essays. The information is a little dated, but the book does provide a basic starting point.

The overviews tend to follow a basic form and are generally favorable in their description of each school -- these are the 'top 75 business schools,' after all. After reading (and re-reading) the overviews, it became difficult to differentiate between specific schools. This is a problem. A fictional example might be in this form:

-------

Business University's business program established {many years ago} by {insane monk, prominent business person, benevolent megacorporation}. The students describe the curriculum as 'rigorous, but fair.' The school receives high marks for its {campus, location, diversity, team spirit, student friendliness}, but students feel {MIS, parking, career placement, professors in core classes} could use improvement.

Several students remarked 'the faculty is excellent and professors can walk and chew gum at the same time.' However, some disagree, 'not all of the professors are great gum chewers.'

The first year students take core classes in accounting, finance, marketing, and gum chewing. Second year students can select from {a lot of really cool} electives.

The admissions committee considers {GPA, GMAT, essays, recommendations, prior work experience, credit worthiness, and quality of penmanship} all equally. 'We want a student with strong {academics, leadership potential, likelihood of donating, well-roundedness} [...]

-------

Because the format has anonymous comments and does not provide any sense of the scale or number of people with a particular opinion about the school, the two-page summaries ultimately come across as wishy-washy.

The student surveys add some color, but they, too, have flaws. For example, Dartmouth appears at the top of almost all of the 'good' attributes for each school (e.g., 'great professors' 'strong marketing' 'strong teamwork'). I'm sure there are a lot of happy people there, but I couldn't help but wonder if proud students were sandbagging the surveys to pump up their school.

Finally, any book like this is only a snapshot of the school. What ultimately should guide your decision is whether the program and the environment meet your needs. You should definitely sit in on classes and visit campus. s and visit campus.

This is an excellent book for trying to understand the problems between Ireland and England. Also the problems between fellow Irishmen: Prostestants and Catholics.

On the face of it, Marcus Tanner's history of Ireland's religious conflicts looks impressive. Although Tanner is an English journalist, his book is published by a leading university press, it possesses 39 pages of notes to 431 of text, and its bibliography contains many primary sources as well as considerable research among eccelesiatical journals and centuries old books. Tanner's thesis, according to the cover is that "the roots of the Irish conflict are profoundly and inescapably religious," the consequences of England's failed attempt to turn Ireland into a Protestant country.

A closer look reveals some problems. Tanner has written a history of Ireland while ignoring most of the leading historians of the subject. Marianne Elliot goes unmentioned, as does everyone's favorite trio of anti-nationalist Marxists, Paul Bew, Henry Patterson and Peter Gibbon. Nicholas Canny gets only a couple of articles, as does Kevin Whelan. One of the leading concepts in Irish ecclesiastical history, "the denominational revolution" goes completely unnoticed, and so does Emmett Larkin. John Whyte's nuanced history of church-state relations in independent Ireland is nowhere to be found. Donal Kerr's recent book on the Catholic Church and the famine is ignored. The economic historiography of Ireland is also passed over, no mention is made whatsoever of Vaughan, Clark, Moody, O'Grada or Kinealy.

But then that is not surprising, since the economic history of Ireland is also passed over. There is no coherent account of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland or its consequences, outside of its effects on the Catholic church. The Irish potato famine gets only five pages, and mass emigration gets even less, much less than the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1868. In fact the "religious" origins of the struggles is not really coherently presented. In the first few chapters the "Old English" and the Celtic inhabitants are shown to be quite capable of quarrelling despite their common Catholicism. The Catholic hierarchy shows little sympathy to the 1798 rebellion or to Fenianism, and Tanner spends the relatively few pages on the current "Troubles" showing the Protestants and Catholics trying to encourage an ecumenical peace. (The emphasis is on the good will of the Protestant denominations; the role of the Unionist parties, by contrast, isn't even mentioned. On the other hand Tanner views Ireland's political parties as the Catholic Church's willing toadies.)

What we have then is a journalistic effort more eccentric than scholarly. Much of it consists of journalistic anecdotes, such as the appalling state of Irish butter in the 1500s, or illegitimacy among Irish priests, or Machiavellian Anglican bishops. As a history of Irish religion it is curiously old-fashioned. Compared to the sophisticated historiography of the Reformation of such scholars as Christopher Haigh, Ronald Hutton, Gerald Strauss, Eamon Duffy and David Parker, it seems quaint and shallow. Rather than the sophisticated research about what people actually thought, the depth of their Christian convictions, the chimera of popular "paganism", the social role played by Christian institutions and other matters what we get is a history that looks at the bishops and the preachers and assumes the diffusion of their efforts. The last few chapters are particulary unsatisfactory. Gerrymandering in Derry corporation gets only a paragraph, discrimination and the Special Powers Act in Northern Ireland gets even less, but we get several pages on the rather marginal topic of Catholic anti-semitism. The final two chapters exude a shallow complacent attitude of "modernization" sweeping away the dark shadows of Catholicism's influence.

The idea that the Irish conflict is a religious one seems like common sense. Yet there are several major problems with it. For a start if England had not broke with the Church over Henry VIII's divorce, would the subsequent conquest of Ireland have been any nicer? There are other problems. Are the members of Sinn Fein or the Democratic Unionist Party more religious than their compatriots? Not really. Only one Catholic priest has died in the Troubles, one accidentally shot by the English army. Only one Protestant minister has been killed, and he was a leading Unionist politician. Sinn Fein has actually been more liberal on abortion than the Social Democratic and Labor Party. Northern Ireland's urban areas are both more violent and less religious than the rest of the province. In Richard Rose's loyalty survey only 8% of Protestants volunteered that they disliked the Irish Republic because of interference by the Catholic Church. It is not clear that denominational education are encouraging sectarian struggle (they don't in Canada). Tanner does not really discuss any of these matters. Ultimately, this is a book which sheds less light on Ireland than on the limits of journalism.

This history of Irish religion may have trouble finding an audience. Its rather exclusive focus on Irish ecclesiastical history in the past 500 years will not satisfy readers expecting a more general account of Cromwell, King Billy of Orange, the IRA and the rest of the Troubles. Moreover, it apparently is not scholarly enough to placate more learned specialists (see other review, below).

As an intermediate pupil of Irish history, however, I found this an enjoyable read. Tanner, a journalist rather than a professional historian, synopsizes some fairly dense material and keeps it lively. He is a master of the devastating thumbnail sketch. For example, the failure of the reformation in Ireland can be partly attributed to the low quality of the churchmen responsible for its implementation, such as the disagreeable, mediocre, corpulent English Archbishop of Dublin, Browne, and the slippery Irish Bishop of Cashel, Miler Magrath, who became rich from embezzlement and confiscation, and was "little better than a gangster who galloped about his diocese in armour, preceded by outriders and a man carrying a skull on a tall pole."

Writing about the evangelizing Protestants during the Famine who were accused of "souperism," or buying converts with food, Tanner cites one obtuse clergyman who defended himself by boasting that not one penny of his funds had been wasted on famine relief. He became exalted preaching to one group of "living skeletons" in Connemara, who in all probability would soon become first-hand witnesses to the glory of God that he described (Tanner puts this better, but I don't have the book in front of me).

The Catholic Church as well comes in for some well-deserved roasting, particularly those monumentally arrogant princes of the church who dominated the political life of the Republic until toppled by the sex scandals of the 1990s, exemplified by Archbishop Croke, an "oriental pasha" who made and unmade Parnell and other politicians.

Some of Tanner's choices are indeed eccentric (why does the chapter on the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869 precede the chapter on Daniel O'Connell and his agitating priests of the 1820s?), and a few errors creep in (the patrician, peripatetic William O'Connell at one point is assigned to New York, when of course "Gangplank Bill" was Cardinal of Boston).

As well, Tanner doesn't give enough credit to the churchmen, North and South, who played a crucial role in finally ending the Troubles (see last year's Secret History of the IRA), ironically when both Catholicism and Protestantism are dwindling in importance in a secular modern Ireland. (Archbishop Croke and de Valera would fulminate to see the girls of Dublin today in their miniskirts and platform shoes tottering about the discos of Temple Bar.)

I used it to study for the mathematics CLEP and there were many typos in the questions; the detailed answers showed a slightly different question than the problem. This was very frustrating.

I bought a number of CLEP books and thought this one was one of the better ones. It is extremely comprehensive and covers alot of ground.

My primary complaint about this book is that much of the information is out of date. For instance, schools' tuition costs are often significantly different than those directly stated on their websites. Some of the information about the culture is helpful, but could easily be discerned from reading information about schools online or perhaps in other books. A lot of the other information is intuitive or so cursory to be useless.

Better to look at information on the Business Week B-School website or other internet resources or just go to the bookstore and simply glance at the schools you're considering. Absolutely not worth owning.

Helpful book in the first process of deciding on a business school. Give a lot of good content in relation to academics, admissions, and cost. Also, the book helps to simply compare schools that you're interested in. I'd recommend it.

Are you a beginning graduate student who is a bit overwhelmed? This is a great book for you! This book contains great advice about how to balance a busy home and work life with the demands of graduate school, as well as practical tips about how to complete all the major components of graduate school programs. The author takes a very realistic approach, too. This is a useful tool!

This book provides generic advice about graduate school, from the decision to pursue an advanced degree to choosing your committee and writing your thesis. However, the book is only 130 pages... quite small for its hefty price tag. Most of the advice also seems obvious, such as getting to know professors on your committee, and the reminders that graduate school is difficult and life-changing hardly help one feel more at ease.

Teachers are performers, by default. Their choice is not whether to perform, but whether to make a conscious choice to do it effectively. "Unfortunately," the authors write (p. 18), "We who teach in higher education rarely receive formal training in the performance aspects of our teaching." Borrowing techniques and insights from the performing arts, the authors provide a variety of tools for correcting that problem. Their book is aimed at college instructors, but much is also appropriate for middle and high school instruction.

Facilitating discussion, engaging students, and creating a dynamic classroom are some of the key goals which the book covers. I found especially helpful the specific examples given, examples reaching far across the disciplines. The many examples of dynamic teaching in nursing, chemistry, biology, and so on, demonstrate that these techniques can and should be used in the sciences and other fields as well.

Among much else, the authors discuss nonverbal cues, audience awareness techniques, roles the instructor can play, and suggestions for breaking through normal routines. Still, the book as a whole is not as much method as it is theory. For example, I came away with a better understanding of why and when I should consider using role plays than how to actually do it. I would have liked to see some discussion of the actual dynamics, such as Bill Bigelow outlines in the book "Rethinking Our Classrooms: Teaching for Equity and Justice."

Along the same lines, the specific examples given are usually summarized in a sentence or two. I wanted more: more details, more discussion of how those examples worked and why. The authors suggest, for instance, using role plays to talk through tough situations like a student dominating discussion (p. 145). But I'd think most instructors wouldn't have the time or the self-confidence to actually carry that out. A short case study taking me through an implementation of that strategy might have changed my mind.

Nonetheless, the book's suggestions are quite helpful (though at times repetitive) and turn the reader's attention to critical aspects of the teaching process most teachers rarely consider. Though it's uneven, I recommend the book to all instructors; you will find something in here which will improve your teaching.

The authors do an excellent job of connecting "performing" to the teaching philosophy of active learning. If you are already sold on active learning, you will find some of their material a bit repetitive. However, the authors' target seems to be people who use a one-way talk or "sage on the stage" style of teaching. For them, this book could be eye-opening, with its call for abandoning the "content provider role" and moving toward more interaction-oriented teaching.

Every chapter contains suggestions for exercises, many requiring physical movement and the cooperation of others. Many chapters also offer checklists for self-assessment, although I question whether untutored instructors will have the self-awareness to make good use of them.

Two things could be improved in the next edition of the book. First, the authors should eliminate the many very positive references & short vignettes concerning their colleagues' teaching. I'm sure most of the people named are exemplary teachers, but the snippets of material are much too short to serve a pedagogical function. Second, for a book by people apparently heavily involved in dramatic arts, there are surprisingly few in-depth lessons on how to take specific learning objectives & apply tips from the stage to achieve them. Many short references are made to popular plays and films, but they don't really add value to the book.

I would certainly recommend that instructors interested in active learning read this book. I'm not sure I would recommend its purchase. I should note, however, that with my purchase I received a bonus: pages 117-148 appeared twice in the book!

I love this book! It is so accurate and fair. Some individuals might be bitter ...because it rightfully ranks the medical school at Queen's University (Canada) well under the University of Manitoba... but you can't argue with the facts. Thank you Dr. Gourman for your unbiased report.

You've read the critical reviews that dismiss Dr. Gourman's research and publications. But what does the MARKET say about his work. Last published in 1997 for $21.95 and today, eight years later, the LOWEST priced used copy here on Amazon is NINE (9) times that original retail price.

Go figure .... and who do you believe?

As mentioned in the previous review, Jack Gourman (who taught at the University of Michigan at one point) heavily favors large state universities over private insitutions, which leads him into making such howlers as declaring Michigan to be one of the three top undergraduate institutions in the country.

Michigan is a fine institution, but like any state university, its mission is to provide an education to the youth of the home state, which means that it is not going to be able to recruit and accept the best students nationwide.

State institutions also offer courses of study (e.g., Home Economics, Agriculture and the like) essential to the well-being of the home state but generally not among the course offerings of the best private schools. Unlike US News, Gourman is vague about how he weights the various factors he considers, but it appears that he weights these programs on a par with Mathematics and Physics.

Having said all of that, I found his lists useful as a cross-check against other rankings. For instance, Gourman lists the University of Delaware as one of the top 10 institutions in the country in Chemical Engineering. That's obvious once you think about it (Dupont is headquartered in Delaware), but I hadn't thought about it until I read his book.

In the meantime, Jack, if you want to be taken seriously, disclose your methodology.

It is impossible for me to view this report as credible and reliable without knowing anything about its methodology. For all we know, these rankings may represent nothing more than the author's personal opinions. Every other ranking publication, no matter what the subject, explains its criteria for selection and ranking. It frightens me that high school students are relying upon this misinformation when applying to colleges.

The Gourman report is a very good source for the evaluation of undergraduate programs across the country. There is an obvious bias of Professor Gourman that forces him to favor large state institutions instead of smaller liberal arts schools. When he ranks the top 100 schools, he gives Harvard and Princeton the number 1 and 2, at number 3 he lists the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor. Swarthmore College weighs in at 97. A lot of people would disagree with this ranking, but Gourman makes a point I agree with. Gourman argues that the larger state schools (especially schools that draw from all over the country and not just their home state such as Michigan, Wisconsin, California-Berkeley, and Virginia) are the best schools to receive a degree from. I agree with him because the strength of programs he evauluates are obviously better at the larger schools than such schools as Williams, Swarthmore and Amherst. While you may disagree with his rankings, it is hard to argue with the depth of support and statistics he deals with. It is also impossible to argue with his ranking of the U of M. Go Blue!

I am one of the "fools". Well, that's the only sympathetic group in this novel, and they are marginalized. With personal experience of a college French department where the dominant element would gladly push out that pesky language and literature and style itself The Department of Theory and Discourse, I admit that much of my delight in this satire comes from the in jokes.

However, there is another dimension here that appeals to any reader interested in the task of writing fiction, which L'Heureux (how do you pronounce this happy name in American, anyway?) deconstructs even as he sends up Deconstruction. Who can resist the parallel of Olga, in her role as Author, to Mary Poppins? She alights on the scene, opens her carpetbag of tricks, manipulates her unsuspecting charges and, having changed everything, disappears into the air.

This book is a must read for aspirants to a MFA writing program, or and English PhD, and also to survivors of these programs. Persons in humanities academia will appreciate the name dropping, inside jokes, and mentions of deconstructionism. Other may find them tedious.

The book is a little slow to get started, but does pick up somewhat after that.

The book is seriously marred by 2 chapters "humorously" describing a circumcision. The characters gleefully talk about the "healthfulness and cleanliness" of circumcision... a very dated opinion considering the recent spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a very real risk of infant circumcision. This is not a great subject for humor.

A small request for the author:
1) Next time you write about circumcision, please watch one first. Babies do not "coo happily" an hour or two after having 10,000+ nerve endings and 40% of their penile skin removed.
2) All babies, including fictional ones, deserve the best possible start in life. Among PhD educated stay-at-home moms in the USA (as two moms are in the book) breast feeding rates are well over 90%. The mention of "bottles" in this book significantly detracts form the realism.
3) Real babies, at 3-6 months old, do not sleep most of the time. Visit with a mom of a 3 month old for a few hours, and you will see what life is really like.

Handmaid of Desire is a ridiculous tale of lust, greed, and murder set in the Ivory Towers of Northern California academia. It is light reading, and unwittingly, the author gives support to those who criticize "English" as a useless university major and department. This book seems like it was written for the author and his friends as an inside joke--"Ho ho ho! That jibe at Foucault was hilarious!"

The novel is centered around Professor Olga Kominska, who can read minds and knows the deepest secrets of the English professors with whom she works. She thinks her time as an invited guest professor should be spent helping the other teachers with their personal problems. I honestly can't go on reviewing something that doesn't deserve the time or space. Skip this one at all costs.

After the frist hundred pages, this novel falls into repetition without interesting variations. Longueur succeeds longueur. The characters cease developing and the situations become predictable. Only verbal brilliance could save the book.

A much niftier book about life in poststructural times on a major American unversity campus is Hynes, The Lecturer's tale. Much more interesting style, plot, and characters.

"The Handmade of Desire" by John L'Heureux is not written for the average reader who likes her tales to flow chronologically. One has to have some prior knowledge to follow his 'plot' which seems to be a send-up of deconstructionism.

Olga Kominski, a supposedly brilliant feminist writer joins the faculty of an unnamed university. She is of vague origin, perhaps Eastern European given her Polish last name. Her origin would not be an issue but for her proclivity to speak with multiple accents.

Olga has been hired as a member of the English faculty, and she is working on a book in her spare time. A professor of English writing a book is not unusual, but what is unusual is that as Olga writes, the characters in L'Heureux's book act in accordance with the characters in Olga's text. Is Olga merely recording the events she witnesses in the lives around her? Is she manipulating people so that they behave in ways she desires? Or, is she writing a script and through mysterious powers gaining the willing participation of the characters?

One experiences a sensation akin to that felt when viewing the famous Escher print where the hand is drawing the hand is drawing the hand. Surely, the author is spoofing the reader.

Most of the characters in Olga's book and L'Heureux's book are faculty peers or their spouses. All have secrets. All have problems. Unfortunately, the characters in both books are one-dimensional caricatures. I found it difficult to care about them. Unlike the characters in Jane Smiley's "Moo" some of whom still live in my mind, L'Heureux's characters are totally forgetable. The possible exception is Daryl the taxicab driver who seems to be "real."

As I sit in Strozier Library, in the center of the Florida State University campus, I can tell you that FSU was established in 1857.

I will try and keep this review dealing with the big picture, not getting bogged down in whether there are any insignificant errors in the 768 page volume or not (there are), but rather focus on its utility to a potential graduate student. While it is true, as one reviewer points out, that most of this information is available by phoning the schools in question, that seems to be missing the point: in this one book all the information that a prospective student needs to begin their graduate school search is in one place. That, in a nutshell, is why this is valuable.

The book has profiles on essentially every school in the US with graduate programs, including many I had never even heard of. The profiles explain what programs are available, admittance requirements and procedures, costs, addresses, phone numbers, contact personnel, etc. All the information is extremely well presented and genuinely useful. While I am sure that there are small errors in a book this comprehensive (just like there are errors in any 700-plus page book, be they grammatical or otherwise) this is a great resource for basic research into a school or program. Obviously, when a student has accomplished this first step, they will need to go to individual school websites, talk to schools, and ultimately visit campuses.

For general information on graduate programs in the US, this book is the clear champion compared with the other available options. Any prospective graduate student that isn't 100 percent sure what program they want to enroll in should own this book.

This book gives a bare amount of info most of which could have found out by using the phone. The information given is very vague and the book needs more info to be helpful.

I was browsing at the local bookstore for future graduate schools when I came across this: The book listed University of Florida as established in 1953 and Florida State University as 1857. The dates are reversed. University of Florida was establisehd in 1857. I know this because I graduated from the University of Florida. Overall the book gives a decent overall view of what programs and degrees the grad schools offer. A bit more info on graduate tuition fees for in state and out of state would be helpful.