Colleges That Change Lives Coming Back to Kansas City

Parents of high school aged students will want to mark this date on your calendar now: Wednesday, August 31. That is when the Colleges That Change Lives tour will be returning to Kansas City after not including us on their schedule the last couple of years.

Not familiar? Colleges That Change Lives is a non-profit organization that strives to educate students and their families about the importance of finding the "best fit" when selecting a college/university education. Their mission and subsequent annual nationwide tours highlighting a specific set of colleges are based upon the best selling book, Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About College, published in 1996 by retired New York Times education editor, Loren Pope. Although he passed away in 2008, his legacy is as poignant now as it ever was.

His chosen list of campuses is derived from years of research devoid of rankings from magazines, perceived quality or reputation based solely upon admission difficulty, size of endowments, or athletic prowess covered my national media outlets. Here is a listing of the colleges that are featured, all of which are smaller, liberal arts oriented campuses:

Agnes Scott College (Decatur, GA)

Allegheny College (Meadville, PA)

Antioch College (Yellow Springs, OH)

Austin College (Sherman, TX)

Beloit College (Beloit, WI)

Birmingham-Southern College (Birmingham, AL)

Centre College (Danville, KY)

Clark University (Worcester, MA)

College of Wooster (Wooster, OH)

Cornell College (Mt. Vernon, IA)

Denison University (Granville, OH)

Earlham College (Richmond, IN)

Eckerd College (St. Petersburg, FL)

Emory & Henry College (Emory, VA)

Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA)

Goucher College (Baltimore, MD)

Guilford College (Greensboro, NC)

Hampshire College (Amherst, MA)

Hendrix College (Conway, AR)

Hiram College (Hiram, OH)

Hope College (Holland, MI)

Juniata College (Huntingdon, PA)

Kalamazoo College (Kalamazoo, MI)

Knox College (Galesburg, IL)

Lawrence University (Appleton, WI)

Lynchburg College (Lynchburg, VA)

Marlboro College (Marlboro, VT)

McDaniel College (Westminster, MD)

Millsaps College (Jackson, MS)

New College of Florida (Sarasota, FL)

Ohio Wesleyan University (Delaware, OH)

Reed College (Portland, OR)

Rhodes College (Memphis, TN)

Southwestern College (Georgetown, TX)

St. John's College (Annapolis, MD)

St. John's College (Santa Fe, NM)

St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN)

Ursinus College (Collegeville, PA)

Wabash College (Crawfordsville, IN)

Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL)

Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA)

The Colleges That Change Lives Tour will be in Kansas City on Wednesday, August 31, beginning at 7pm, at the KCI Expo Center (11730 NW Ambassador Drive, KCMO 64153). The event is FREE to the public and will last approximately 1.5 hours.