Reviews mixed in '97 Fiske college guide:
UB rated strong on faculty, academics

By SUE WUETCHER
News Services Associate Editor

"Fine faculty and a variety of academic programs have always been UB's strengths, and that hasn't changed," the guide begins. "The engineering and business management schools are nationally prominent, and architecture is strong," states the guide, which also praises the UB programs in occupational and physical therapy, English-"notable for its emphasis on poetry"-French, physiology, geography and music.

The guide gives UB 4 stars out of 5 for academics, 2 telephones out of 5 for social life and 2 points out of 5 for quality of life.

While some students may lament that the university is far from the Big Apple, the guide notes, "who needs the city when you've got strong professional schools, a fine honors program, great professors and a reason to chug beer and chomp on chicken wings each time the Super Bowl rolls around?"

Edited by Edward B. Fiske, former education editor of The New York Times, the guide tells prospective students who have their hearts set on a small school with individualized attention to steer clear of UB.

"It's so big they had to divide the campus into North and South," it adds. "Class size can be a problem, especially for freshmen. Smaller recitation sessions humanize the largest courses. Scheduling conflicts are not unusual, and required courses are often the most difficult to get into. Students seem to accept that some degree of faculty unavailability is the necessary trade-off for having professors who are experts in their fields at a school where graduate education and research gets lots of the attention."

The Fiske guide, hailed by USA Today as "the most readable and informative" college guide in America, includes information about admissions, academics, room-and-board options and social life from more than 300 of the best and most interesting colleges around the country. Information was gathered from administrators, students and visits by Fiske staffers to some of the institutions.

In addition to UB, the SUNY campuses profiled are the university centers in Albany, Binghamton and Stony Brook and the colleges in Geneseo and Purchase.

Forty-two schools-including Bing-hamton University and Geneseo State College-are listed as "Best Buys."

The guide is not error-free. It notes, for example, that UB's North and South campuses "are connected by 'the Spine,' a corridor that enables everyone to travel to class and the libraries safe from inclement weather."

"The largest of SUNY centers, UB offers the most comprehensive education of all the New York state schools, but depends on its students to come and find it," the guide concludes. "UB students sometimes lose patience with the crowds and inconvenience of two campuses." n