In the category of Someday, We'll Look Back on This and Laugh, people who already have run the college admissions obstacle course along with their children will find some fond memories in "Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College."

Andrew Ferguson offers a wry view of an exercise that most people would describe as frustrating or even frightening -- but not funny. Ferguson demonstrates that humor can be found in even the darkest of places.

My favorite passage so far is his de More...

We're gearing up for the whole apply-to-college scene, so I picked up this book with equal parts curiosity and trepidation. It was just the thing to get me over my "OMG, I don't want to deal with this" reluctance to dive in and educate myself about this experience. I sometimes thought, while reading, that I'd personally feel a little put out if I was doing as much work as Andrew Ferguson was doing to get his kid into the best college possible when the kid in question was being so irritatingly un More...

I'm over 10 years away from this process, but its nice to know that some things never change (though I was lucky to got in-state tuition when it wsa still less than $10k a year). The experience that Ferguson describes has been the experience of most middle and upper middle class students for the past 20 years and, as he describes, these are 'champagne' problems. The irony is that those are the exact same students who don't need to worry about where they go to college as long as they go somewhere More...

For some reason, I have been really into college books lately, both in first person and "about" books. This was a first person account, very current on some author getting his kid into college. Nothing fancy (thankgod) but still, better then CC (LAME!). My guess is that the kids went to U of Virginia as that is the state they live in, the author never mentioned it by name and it's a Big U. Yay for me, the author went to Occidental ("Oxy" as I'll always read it) which is like next door to my pare More...

Any parent who’s had a child apply for college will be able to relate to Andrew Ferguson’s look at the process in Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College. But the ones who will get the most out of reading the book will be anyone with a kid who’s in high school as well as the students themselves.

I read Crazy U with my daughter and our mother-daughter book club with girls who are nearly 17 and looking at completing college applications in the fall of 2011. Most of them have More...

In this amusing memoir of getting his son off to college, Ferguson asks himself a number of "why" questions. Why is getting ones offspring into a "selective" college thought to be so important? Why are all these young people taking the SAT? Why would one expect any relationship between a liberal arts degree and job success? Why does college cost so much? And why is it so difficult to determine the educational results of a college degree?

The author does not pretend to be immune from these obs

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There is plenty to be cynical about in the college process, and Mr. Ferguson's dry, witty observatons do that approach justice. He gives authentic, insightful, and entertaining voice to the frustrations many parents feel when trying to guide their teenagers through the college process these days. I am concerned, however, that parents reading this book will be further discouraged about a process that is already pretty daunting. I wish that his book had included some more balanced and hopeful info More...

I really enjoyed this fast, easy read. This book showed up at an opportune time for me--we begin "college visits" on Friday with my oldest son. The book pointed out some of the stupidity of the admissions process--but basically decides we're stuck with it anyway. As we are about to leap into the same process, many things in this book really struck a chord. The author describes one "kitchen conversation" between a group of parents discussing their kids' SAT scores, and one mom obviously wants to More...

This book had a lot of good information, albeit biased. But I think most of the info about the SATs, college admissions, the US News listings was accurate and well0researched. The book was written in an amusing and easily read way. (Although there were a few topics that the author just wrote too much about and it got tedious so I skimmed).

I think this would be useful to someone with a 9th grader....and who realizes that this is not a guide, but an anecdotal account of one family.

Our college appl More...

A fun read that related the author's experiences with his son's college search while exploring the head-scratching process that is college application, financial aid search, and admission. There is also a serious critique of the marketing of college admission and the importance of the college degree, which appear to him more important to the schools than actually providing a meaningful education experience. Anyone who has been through the application process will not find any surprises here - th More...

A good friend went off to college last fall and signed up for a major in Great Books with a minor in history. She started reading Plato and Euripides and studying early US history. Hmm, I thought, maybe the alarms about grade inflation, binge drinking on campus, extremely high college tuitions, lack of rigor in the curriculum, and other reports of how higher education is in trouble are being overstated.

So I poked around and found some books that purported to take the pulse of tertiary education More...

My family is navigating the college admissions maze again—we’re no longer surprised by all the paperwork which gets lost or misdirected, but it’s just as frustrating the third time around as it was the first two times. When should kids take the SAT? The ACT? Fill out the FAFSA? For first-timers, the college application process is an alphabet soup of mysterious acronyms, not to mention the stress-inducing deadlines.
Author Andrew Ferguson investigates college admissions in his book “Crazy U: One More...

This isn't a how-to book for the college application process, but it is a commiseration, and a humorous one at that. My family is on the brink of starting this process (eldest child is in the second half of sophomore year of high school), and I have every fear and trepidation you can name, plus a lot of confusion.

Ferguson is mystified by how the college process has become such a circus in the past few decades. What was a non-issue in the 70s and 80s is today's arms race. He sets out to find ans More...

Interesting "rite of passage" story told from the vantage point of a father trying to deal with his son's attempting to get into college. While that part is certainly interesting, the part I enjoyed was the background material on things like expensive "college admissions coachs", the history and substance of the SATs, background of the rating systems, etc. These are told with a definite tongue in cheek at times. (Classic look at the profound predictions by the pundits on the effect of the recess More...

I had a really easy time getting into school. All things being equal, I think my top choice school would have probably been a safety school as well, but since I was planning on keeping things local, that was to be expected. Regardless, I applied to my school on a normal schedule and got in before I applied anywhere else or even took the SAT. My "getting into college" routine was significantly stress-free compared to many of my peers.

This book is about the stresses I missed out on. About how comp More...

Best thing I've read about the madness known as getting your kid into an elite college, and extremely funny to boot. Confirms every cynical thought you tried to surpress about schools gaming the U.S. News and World Report college rankings, tuition increases, professional admissions consultants, and the College Board exams. And, no surprise, there's scads of money riding on this industry, too. Best bon mot: Never start the FAFSA after midnight. Nonetheless, within 24 hours of finishing this book More...

This book is a must read for all parents (and kids) in the college application process. Though my sons were through this process before the book was written, we've just completed the med-school application journey. It made me understand the process so much better. I'd swear this guy had been a fly on the wall in my house - his written words were some of the same thoughts that came to my mind and out of my mouth. Though the contect could be tedious is isn't - he does a great job of presenting the More...

Quick read about the enormous business that college admissions has become in the US. If you have kids, might freak you out a bit, but fortunately mine are still a long way off from being college age, so no doubt I'll forget any disturbing details I read by then...I would have liked a bit more depth and though on the big question (which the author acknowledges is really the BIG question) - and that is just why is it so expensive and where is all the money going anyway? All in all, a nice light, s More...

I really like Andrew Ferguson's writing style and his wit, which would merit four stars. I guess I didn't need to know as much about getting a kid into college as I thought I did when I picked up the book because I found myself scan-reading the parts where he reported his research and skipping forward, trying to find the bits he wrote about his family and his own personal experiences about "getting his kid into college." The scan-reading is always a sign that I'd give fewer stars, like two. So t More...

Memoir about one family’s experience as the oldest child goes through the college admission process. The author/dad alternates providing a wry voice of sanity as he weighs all the conflicting how-to advice with an occasional plunge into the asylum. While this was only mentioned briefly, I was interested in the suggestion of one of the author’s friends that the current skyrocketing tuition and obsessively competitive system might be a bubble like the housing and stock markets. I suspect that as l More...

Tried just a bit too hard to be a tongue-in-cheek expose of the absurdity of the college admissions process. Although the process has its absurd moments, the book just didn't have the spark of prose I have come to expect from journalist-writers discussing their life experiences - Mr. Ferguson is not a Jim Squires or Dave Barry when it comes to prose.

As for substance, I found it tended to the snark rather than the incisive, the stereotype rather than the innovative approach. A well-intentioned ef More...

This book makes me laugh out loud and has fun with skewering the traditional college search process. It walks through the 'how did we get to this place' with college applications. He also provides a look back for the history of colleges in the U.S. A fascinating and fun read. Andrew Ferguson peels back the layers of the SAT's and the admissions process. His account on when he sat down to take the SAT (at the same time as his son) is absolutely hilarious! Much of what he writes provided assurance More...

This was not quite what I was expecting! I thought it would be a simple anecdotal tale of a man and his son as they navigate the college process. While their journey was chronicled, it was more than that. Andrew Ferguson delivered an interesting journalistic look at the college "system" at times through a harsh lens. High priced counselors, the SAT test, US News and World Report rankings are all examined. As a parent who has gone through the process with one child and is ready to start soon with More...

A quick, interesting read. Witty and well-written -- reminiscent of A.J. Jacobs' style of writing, merging personal experience and journalistic research. Certainly from a skewed perspective as a parent, but Ferguson doesn't try to pretend otherwise. Probably not a topic of interest to everyone, but to families considering selective colleges, teachers or counselors of applicants, or higher ed faculty and staff, it provides an interesting point of view as well as some humorous - and occasionally v More...

PSAT, AP, SAT, GPA, FAFSA. Yep, this book is about a dad’s quest to help his son apply to colleges. It hits all the points you’d expect: rankings hype and the US News and World Report, financial aid (lol, wut aid?) and cost inflation, cost/benefit “is it really worth it” analysis of college itself, a bit of historical background on the founding of the American university and those ideals as they changed into what they are today with some GI Bill and something about multiculturalism that’s caused More...

It's fun and light and a short, fast read. I do strongly recommend it for the parents of high schoolers, although others who are simply interested should enjoy it as well. It doesn't give a ton of advice, except some really basics: let your kid do the work him/herself, don't hover too much, try to calm down, understand that as torturous and baffling as this process is, it's what we've got so we need to deal with it.

One of the only bits of practical advice was so useful that it merits being call More...

If your kid doesn't give a $#%$ about college, why would you break your neck to get them into one? Maybe I'll feel differently in 16 years when I am facing college. Or, according to some "experts", I should be stressing about her college now. Those people are nuts. She won't even go down a slide by herself, so I can't imagine where she might aspire to go to school. I love when I have good reason to procrastinate.

The author did make some really good points about the "business" of colleges. The m More...

This was a very funny, personal take on the college admissions rat race from a parental point of view. Since the author is a journalist, it included results of some of his personal research in the form of condensed wisdom, often contradictory, from "experts," again, from a parent's eyes. Starting with the fear-mongering college consultants through the much-vaunted (and maligned, for good reason, apparently) US News rankings, the carefully-oresented viewbooks from colleges, and ending with the fi More...

I read most of this book a couple of months ago - and I wish it had been around 10 - 15 years ago, when my kids were going through the college admission process. Ferguson, a journalist, traces his son's journey through the world of college admissions, complete with commentary on admissions coaches, the uses and abuses of various admissions criteria, and the college essay game. The book is really aimed at parents - sort of a survival guide - more than it is at students, but both might find it use More...

Having just finished the college app cycle with my son, this book really resonated with me. I brought this along for a transpacific flight and finished it in 3 hours. I loved the author's humor and as many others have commented, he hits the experience right on. I laughed and I cried. There is a right balance between his humorous experiences and his attempt in "reporting" this as an investigative project. I had hoped he revealed more "secrets", but, maybe in another book! Highly recommend this!