The Student's Guide to Ontario Universities

Dean Tudor is a professor of Journalism at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute.

This book is useful not so much for its main content as for its
preliminary matter. The guide offers straightforward descriptions of
what is available at Ontario’s 17 universities, covering such topics
as choosing a college, deciding on a course of study, and adhering to
admission standards. Along the way there is also descriptive material
about universities’ residences, student services, athletic facilities,
scholarships, programs for mature students, and so forth. There is
little here by way of critical analysis or “inside dirt.” Mundane
information abounds: names of presidents, numbers enrolled (but only in
the whole institution, not in every program), admission procedures, and
names of teaching facilities. The information I was able to check for
one institution seemed generally correct. But there is nothing here on
the quality of the teaching faculty, the research done at the
university, or the institution’s reputation and prestigious standing
(or lack thereof). Perhaps since Gibson herself is an academic she
doesn’t want to (or cannot) go out on a limb about more subjective
matters.

The best part of the book is actually its first 35 pages.
“Researching your life work” is a nifty little section on basic
values, work, and skills that will serve one throughout life. Here there
are forced choices and questionnaires to answer the perennial question
“who am I?” But Gibson does it all nicely, summarizing a wide range
of counselling materials and making it all accessible. She does much the
same in “Researching a University,” a section that describes how to
find material about a place and how to make a personal judgment about it
(for example, by visiting classes and knowing what to look for). A
worthwhile purchase for libraries that are tired of vandalized
university-calendar sections.