As a senior in high school, Jordan Goldman ’04 found choosing a college unnecessarily frustrating.
“Not everyone has the money to travel to all these schools,” he said. “I wanted to find some way to make the process easier, cheaper and more interesting.”
Freshman year at Wesleyan, Goldman set out to do just that. He linked up with his friend Colleen Buyers ’04 and together they decided to create an entirely student-produced college guidebook series that promises to give a variety of opinions on some of the nation’s top colleges. The “Students’ Guide to Colleges” was born.
Since then, Goldman and Buyers have secured a book deal with Penguin Books, a staff of over 100 student representatives at 45 schools—with more coming—and an expected publication date of August 2005.
“It’s incredible to be part of such a entirely student-run company where the only non-students are lawyers, agents, and the people at Penguin,” Buyers said. “In addition to the representatives at campuses nationwide, we have scores of students working on every other aspect of the enterprise.”
Both Goldman and Buyers went to large public high schools that offered little counseling in the college application process.
“I lived and died by college guides,” Buyers said. “Where I come from, two people have heard of Wesleyan. I wish I had something like [”Student Guide to Colleges“] when I was in high school—something that’s honest, witty, and in students’ own voices.”
Goldman thinks “Students’ Guide” will have a real edge over the competition. “Most of the guidebooks on the market are dry,” he said.
According to Goldman, in other guides, many colleges get a final say in what is published, a phenomenon Goldman deems “impure.”
Unlike other books, Goldman and Buyers’ guide will be entirely student produced and written. On a website, students at numerous schools are encouraged to fill out a survey about their schools.
Surveys from companies like The Princeton Review ask multiple-choice questions, but with “Students’ Guide,” students will answer longer form questions. They can write anything they want in categories of “the institution,” “the education,” “the students,” “the activities,” and “the social scene.”
Writing prompts ask questions like, “What’s written in the stalls of the busiest bathroom on campus?”
Five responses will be chosen from each school and published.
“Hopefully, a reader can read all five and come up with a composite of what that school is like,” Goldman said.
They hope to get thousands of responses to their survey. Wesleyan students are encouraged to log onto their website at www.studentsguidetocolleges.com.
“It’s amazing to see how many people are enthusiastic at the most disparate of schools,” Buyers said. She says the response exceeded their expectations in the first two weeks since the survey was posted on the Internet.
“Students’ Guide” used the “U.S. News & World Report” rankings as a starting point, but worked to correct what they believed were its biases. “Students’ Guide” will feature more public schools and colleges outside the northeast.
Emily Polak ’05, Wesleyan’s representative to the “Students’ Guide,” hopes students will take the time to share their Wesleyan experiences on the survey.
“The more responses that we get, the better representation the book will have of Wesleyan as a whole,” she said. “[The book] really allows us to appeal to students who would fit in at Wesleyan, and also bring something to the community.”
Students afraid of being criticized or ostracized for controversial comments about their colleges are given the option of writing under a pseudonym. Goldman and Buyers want to use as little censorship as possible.
“We do want multiple perspectives,” Goldman said. “[The survey] can also be a way for politicized groups on campus to make their opinions and positions known. If they then get published, those opinions get national exposure.”
The book could also mean national exposure for Goldman and Buyers. The team plans a media offensive as they near the launch date. Goldman says the duo will run the company if it succeeds.
“It could become a career or a piece of a career,” he said. “I want to be a writer so it could help with that.”
Kathy McNamee ’07 says such a book would have been helpful during her college search last year.
“I think it would have helped to get a student’s perspective,” she said. “Every student’s experience is different.”
Goldman also hopes the book discourages what he calls the “bumper sticker culture” of applying to college. Brand name schools are taking fewer students, so he hopes to highlight other schools that could be a perfect match for a prospective student.
“We wanted the people putting the money into college to get the closest thing to talking to real students,” he said.
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