The book can hardly be called a college guide because it looks at only 125 schools. Of these, the vast majority are either Ivies, other highly selective private schools or a few prestigious state universities (e.g.,Berkeley). The target audience for this book consists of honor students with minimum board scores of 1,300 or better. It provides little meaningful information for the 'B' average student. When I first learned of this book, I expected that it would be a useful resource compared to the vanilla comments in college guides by Peterson, Fiske and especially Kaplan. I was mistaken. If your child is an honor student, the book does provide some useful insights about core curriculum, faculty leanings and campus political climate.