Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College
Ferguson (Land of Lincoln), an editor at the Weekly Standard, chronicles his son's journey to getting accepted into college in this humorous memoir. Ferguson, an overwhelmed and underprepared parent, shows off his wit and research skills as he tries to make sense of a serpentine system that has him debating if he needs to hire his own ,000-a-year college admission counselor. From there, Ferguson discusses everything from what lengths schools will go to rate highly in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings guide to an outline of the "history of American higher education." In all this digging, Ferguson finds the many "claims for and against" the SATs, how the skyrocketing cost of college is creating its own education bubble, and that "two out of every three" freshman openings are filled before a "general" applicant even gets considered. Still, despite the funny moment like his disastrous retake of the SATs, it isn't till the book's final chapters, when the author starts to connect with his son, that it becomes apparent what they truly learned together on their quest for higher education. (Mar.)(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC.  All rights reserved.