University of Virginia: Off the Record - College Prowler (Off the Record) - Softcover

College guides for each of the top colleges and universities in the US

While writing our series of college guides, we felt it was critical that our content was unbiased and unaffiliated with any college or university. We think it s important that our readers get honest information and a realistic impression of the student opinions on any college campus that s why if any aspect of a particular college is terrible, we (unlike a campus brochure) intend to publish it. While we do keep an eye out for the occasional extremist the cheerleader or the cynic we take pride in letting the college students tell it like it is. We strive to create a college guide that s as representative as possible of each particular campus. Our guides cover both the good and the bad, and whether the survey responses point to recurring trends or a variation in opinion, these sentiments are directly and proportionally expressed through our guides.

College Prowler guides are in the hands of students throughout the entire process of their creation. Because you can t make student-written guides without the students, we have students at each college campus who help write, randomly survey their peers, edit, layout, and perform accuracy checks on every college guide that we publish. From the very beginning, student writers gather the most up-to-date stats, facts, and inside information on their colleges. They fill each section with student quotes and summarize the findings in editorial reviews. In addition, each college or university receives a collection of letter grades (A through F) that reflect student opinion and help to represent contentment, prominence, or satisfaction for each of our 20 specific categories. Just as in grade school, the higher the mark the more content, more prominent, or more satisfied the students are with the particular category.

Once a college guide is written, additional college students serve as editors and check for accuracy even more extensively. Our bounce-back team a group of randomly selected students who have no involvement with the project are asked to read over the material in order to help ensure that the guide accurately expresses every aspect of the university and its students. This same process is applied to the nearly 300 colleges and universities College Prowler currently covers. Each guide is the result of endless student contributions, hundreds of pages of research and writing, and countless hours of hard work. All of this has led to the creation of a student information network that stretches across the nation to every college that we cover. It s no easy accomplishment, but it s the reason that our college guides are such a great resource.

When reading our guides and looking at our college rankings, keep in mind that every college is different and that the students who make up each college are not uniform as a result, it is important to assess colleges on a case-by-case basis. Because it s impossible to summarize an entire college with a single number or description, each guide provides a dialogue, not a decision, that s made up of 20 different topics and hundreds of student quotes. In the end, we hope that this guide will serve as a valuable tool in your college selection process. Enjoy!

This is the kind of information kids really want to know before they pick a college. --Michelle Slatalla, The NY Times, March 9, 2006

"...get viewpoints on a variety of topics from the student body, which is where the Prowler gets its roar." --Melissa Kaplan, Boston Globe, May 23, 2004

"There is information on which schools have packed computer labs, which dorms are studious or riotous, ..." --Ben Gilbert, The Washington Post, April 27, 2004