College Advice Books: Life's Little College Admissions Insights

This self-published book by a marketing consultant and his 17-year-old daughter, fresh off their own college search, offers tips from high school counselors and private college admissions coaches from across the country. Some of the advice is helpful, but much is merely common sense and the book has other flaws as well. You'll probably be better served by one of the other, better advice compilation books out there.

There are so many college advice books on the market these days, that a number of subgenres have sprung up. There's the "inside scoop on getting into the Ivy League" subgenre, the "Ivy League schools are way overblown" category, and the "whole bunch of counselors' tips crammed into a book" division. "Life's Little College Admissions Insights", a self-published book, falls into the latter category, offering input from high school counselors and private college admissions coaches from across the United States.

Some tips are helpful, including one from Robert Bardwell, the president of the New England Association for College Admission counseling, who says, "Do not visit your first college choice first. Students should save the first choice for somewhere in the middle or for the last visit, so they have many other schools to compare it to." But the book's large type and giant margins mean just two to three tips per page, and many of them are simply common sense or things your child's high school counselor should have said. You shouldn't need a $15 book to tell you that an applicant should "be honest when applying," for example, or that "Hard work works!"

The book was written by a father-daughter pair: Eric Yaverbaum, a publicist and marketing consultant whose previous books include "Public Relations for Dummies," and his 17-year-old daughter Cole, who applied to college this year and, I'm guessing, included the writing of the book on her college resume. What I was most curious about was the section that carries her byline and describes her college search. I guess I was hoping for some insight from a teen point of view, but this is pretty basic stuff - and two paragraphs in, she describes using CollegeClickTV.com, a college search Web site, to research schools. That's her father's company.

The book also includes an application timeline (the same one your child's high school counselor hands out), a list of helpful online resources for financial aid and college searches (including Eric Yaverbaum's company, twice), and a copy of Cole's admissions essay. Not to heap criticism on a 17-year-old - I hope this young woman got into the college of her dreams with this very sweet, affectionate portrayal of her mother, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. The essay answers the Common App prompt about someone who has inspired the applicant. But Cole's essay runs into a common pitfall - and I only mention it because it's being showcased in this book as a model to follow. The reason so many college admissions coaches steer their clients away from this particular essay prompt is the difficulty involved in writing an essay about someone else that conveys deep truths and important facts about you. This essay does a lovely job of describing a loving and brave mother. It tells a college admissions officer very little about the applicant.