Getting a college education is probably the most important decision you will ever make in your life. It will determine who you know, what job you get, and what kind of bars you will be kicked out of. It will become an indelible part of your personal history, a small piece of paper that seems hardly worth the effort that sits on your wall to stare you down and remind you of how old and gray you are. So it is important to pick the right college.
Unfortunately, it is completely impossible to pick the right college for you. Trying to do so is like practicing some twisted kind of voodoo. You cannot simply look into a crystal ball, armed with statistics and figures and capsule reviews and silly books like these, and automatically know how your next four years should be spent.
But nonetheless, you're an uneducated moron with nothing to lose. We're the best you've got, and we've got some bucks and books to make.Therefore, the otherwise unemployed scholars and hermits at Nohelp Books will make no attempt to aid your decision; rather, we will just plant random figures throughout, and hope that you have enough sense to ignore them. After all, you made it through high school, right? Thanks to the Orange Baron, we are now taking up expansive portions of telephone bandwidth in order to deliver you this message of hope: that even an uneducated moron like you can make it to the college of your dreams, or at least to the junior college of your dreams.
Chapter 1: Why Attending College is so Important
Any good college information book should be able justify going through all of the pain and suffering of the college applicationsprocess. We cannot, but we will try valiantly.
Chapter 2: The Types of Colleges Out There
If you?re going to play the field, you?ve got to feel thegrass first. Here we outline the major classifications of colleges, such asCommunity Colleges, Technical Schools, Public Universities, Liberal ArtsColleges, Bob?s Junior Colleges, and Bartending Academies.
Chapter 3: Going Public or Private
Once you are aware of the mayhem of the world of academia, you are more readily prepared to be bombarded with the choice of public or private schools. You must decide whether you want to attend a school run byscaredy-cat puppets of the state government, or uppity rich folk with their noses in the air. We provide you with what you need to know in deciding the lesser of these two evils.
Chapter 4: Getting to Know Yourself a Little Better
This is where we turn the tables on you and ask you to lookin the mirror, thus realizing how truly inadequate you are and how pointlessyour college dreams are. Only when you are down that far can the real businessof choosing colleges begin.
Chapter 5: Your Career Goals
The career you want will affect what major you want, and beaffected by the kind of prestige the college has. Therefore it is important toknow whether you will be a janitor or a customer service slave for life, sincesome schools are better at teaching one or the other. Also, budding prostitutesmay want to attend Madame Ovary?s Mansion, for example. It is dreadfullyimportant to match the college to the career.
Chapter 6: Evaluating Campus Life
Every campus has a unique feel. Some are too hard, some aretoo soft, and some are just right. You, as Goldilocks, will be entering intothe Three Bears? House and they are just waking up from their long winter?snap. It?s up to you to muzzle those bears, which somehow translates back tochoosing the right college.
Chapter 7: Financing Your Education
Now, this is where it gets ugly: the druids and morons behind every college?s iron curtain are going to try to gouge you for everycent you?ve got. It?s up to you to get as much money in scholarships andfinancial aid that you can possibly get and thus save yourself from committingthousands of dollars to pay off your student loans every year for the rest ofyour life. This chapter will discuss loans, as well as aggrandizing yourselffor money.
Chapter 8: Applying for Admission
Although it is a feat comparable to winning the Olympics orattaining an Oscar, it is possible to win admission to the college of your dreams, IF and only IF you bend over backwards for the admissions puppets. Ohyeah, and IF and only IF you started this when you were in diapers.
Chapter 9: Navigating Academia
It may seem ridiculous, but you will need to evaluate theactual academic capabilities of a given college. Here is a guide to class sizes, professors, and other irrelevant matters that only a committed,dedicated student-victim would care about.
Chapter 10: Should I Go Ivy League?
There is a major myth that it is a good idea to go to an IvyLeague school. Even if students have an easier time getting jobs, even if ivyleaguers are known for their high expectations and fine reputations, even ifivy league schools may be the best education around, an ivy league school maynot be for you. This is probably because you are a moron or because they havealready stepped on the poor sidewalk ABC gum that you are.
Chapter 11: Making the Final Decision
Ahh, rejections have been filling your mailboxes for weeksnow, and you have finally reached ground level. You are ready to choose whetheryou will go to the junior college three miles from your home, or to the statecollege across town. This decision will be eased by advice from the experts.
Chapter 12: College Rankings
Here we have compiled a random list of the best schools inthe nation. We literally placed a bunch of names on a board and threw darts atthem until all of the names were picked. We figured, why waste all that timeand money and calculations, when it?s unlikely you would understand theresults? The names were listed in the order in which they were hit, and this isyour guide, you incompetent and uneducated fool.
Chapter 13: The Little Things
There are a number of small things to know about the pre-arrival process. Listed are the pitfalls of college entry, such asseparation anxiety, class failure, loss of scholarship money, general lack of money, drunken stupor, stupidity, general sexual things, crazy gambling binges,killing sprees, and cult membership. All are vices to be vigilantly watched forby the incoming college student.
Chapter 14: A Timeline of What You Should Do
Going from the Washington administration to present day, you can track not American History but your own admissions process to ensure that you are meeting all of the necessary deadlines.
