Best 357 Colleges, 2005 Edition

What makes The Best 357 Colleges the most talked-about college guide? We ask college students (over 110,000 of them) what their colleges are really like, and the most revealing answers are in this book. Our pithy narratives cover the entire school, from classes to financial aid to social life. We provide all the basics: admissions criteria, deadlines, phone numbers, and email and snail mail addresses. Our unique rankings in more than 60 categories rate colleges on academics, political leaning, quality of life, cafeteria food, dormitories, social life, and much more. Our Inside Word on each school outfits you with the most concise game plan for getting into your dream college.

Robert Franek is a graduate of Drew University and Vice President and Publisher for The Princeton Review. He has proudly been a part of the company for five years. Robert comes to The Princeton Review with an extensive admissions background. In addition, he owns a walking tour business, leading historically driven, yet not boring, walking tours of his favorite town, New York City! Tom Meltzer is a graduate of Columbia University. He has taught for The Princeton Review since 1986 and is the author or coauthor of seven Princeton Review titles, the most recent of which is Illustrated Word Smart, which Tom cowrote with his wife, Lisa. He is also a professional musician and songwriter. A native of Baltimore, Tom now lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Christopher Maier is a graduate of Dickinson College. During the past five years, he's lived variously in New York City, coastal Maine, western Oregon, central Pennsylvania, and eastern England. Now he's at an oasis somewhere in the midwestern cornfields-the University of Illinois-where he's earning his MFA in fiction. Aside from writing for magazines, newspapers, and The Princeton Review, he's worked as a radio disc jockey, a helping hand in a bakery, and a laborer on a highway construction crew. He's trying to avoid highway construction these days. Andrew Friedman graduated in 2003 from Stanford University, where he was a President's Scholar. He lives in New York City. Carson Brown graduated from Stanford University in 1998, and after getting paid too much for working for various Internet companies for several years, sold her BMW and moved to Mexico. She has now overstayed her welcome south of the border and is returning to San Francisco to be responsible and further her career working as a writer and editor. Julie Doherty is a freelance writer, Web designer, and preschool teacher. She lives in Mexico City. K. Nadine Kavanaugh is pursuing her Master of Fine Arts at Columbia University. Her fiction has appeared on NYCBigCityLit.com and SlackFaith.com. Catherine Monaco-Academics: Graduated from Dickinson College and earned a master's degree from Fordham University. Student Body: Bigger hair, bushier eyebrows (but learned to pluck after junior year). Life: Works as NYC public school teacher, lives in Tribeca, and "always has fun quoting other people for The Princeton Review." Dinaw Mengestu is a graduate of Georgetown University and is currently completing his MFA in fiction at Columbia University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.