The Student's Guide To Getting Into College

Valerie Gilbert, Harvard graduate circa 1985, is the host for this "guide" to getting into college which features interviews with some dozen Harvard students. The tape covers eight main areas: choosing a personal essay topic, writing an effective essay, teacher recommendations, the college interview, parental pressure, high school grades, extracurricular activities, SAT preparation, and choosing the right classes in high school (or even the right high school). The students certainly sound like they know what they're talking about, but if you actually listen to what they're saying, it's not much. Although most of them unhesitantly (and in that blissfully ignorant tone of modern youth) speak for "students," they naturally haven't researched the subject one iota--in fact, when they say "students," what they really mean is "I." What they know is what happened to them personally, and that's all. The students often offer opposite advice from one another, and tend to ramble on during the interviews. The upshot is that while high school students might be inclined to watch this tape because they might identify with the vacuous yuppie wannabe's interviewed, there's really not a whole lot of useable information contained in the program. Campus Video Tours Preparing the College Application Package (reviewed in the September, 1988 issue) is a much better, if also more expensive, choice. Not a necessary purchase. (See ONLY LOVE for availability.)