College Search Sites: Web Surfers Beware
Have any of you tried to search for colleges by visiting a college search site? If so, you already know what I’m talking about, skip to the recommendations below. But if you’re still a search engine virgin, look before you leap. Here is what is happening….
Imagine this scenario. Susie Smith, a high school senior, is valedictorian and president of her class. She has a perfect SAT score, is the captain of the swim team and enjoys working at the local soup kitchen in her spare time.
Like most of her peers, Susie googles “find a good college” and begins her search on the top three listed sites. She completes the online questionnaires and each site provides a recommended list for her school applications.
Harvard? Stanford? N.Y.U.? Not quite. Instead, the three sites agree that the University of Phoenix, DeVry University and AIU online are the best choices for Susie.
Not only has Susie just wasted an hour of her time, but her name has been sold to dozens of schools like the ones listed as matches. She will now be bombarded with spam, phone calls and mailings from schools she has no interest in and these schools will waste a substantial amount of money recruiting the wrong student. This approach does not work for Suzie, nor does it work for the matching schools.
This year, 14.5 million students will use the internet to search for the right college, and colleges will spend $1.8 billion dollars to search for these students. More than sixty companies will profitably offer online college matchmaking services, and nearly all of them will result in frustrated students and wasted educational resources.
How do you make sure this doesn’t happen to you?
- Avoid sites that ask for your contact information upfront
- Read the disclaimer to see who they will be selling your contact info to
- Ask your college counselor what they would recommend
- Visit a few sites to see if you get the same answers
- Start with myUsearch.com, the only truly objective site on the web (shameless plug, I know)
- Try sites that offer reputable services other than search engines such as publishing, test prep, etc. Petersons.com, Collegeboard.org or Princeton Review’s Counselor-O-Matic are not as objective as myUsearch.com, but they are pretty good.
- Read this post about how to choose a college search site.
April 26th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Good post… There is nothing wrong with online colleges, but it is my opinion that most prospective college students do not have online college on their minds when they begin looking at schools.
Although it is quickly becoming out of reach (financially) for today’s middle-class families, traditional college is a great experience and every high-school student who chooses to attend ought to have an opportunity.
June 17th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
If Susie is so intelligent, she should read the site’s privacy policy before submitting personal info
But in general, I don’t think that these online matching sites, including the reputable ones like collegeboard, can really help the upper-tier students find good college matches. Students with these kinds of profiles probably already know that they will be applying to the top US colleges (the list of these is pretty much common knowledge), so if they need to narrow that list down, it’s best to go to the college’s own website to look for additional details on majors, financial aid, and special academic/extracurricular interests.
June 24th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Well Cait. I actually disagree. A lot of upper tier students have predisposed ideas about the best schools, but their ideas are often based on stereotypes and brand name appeal, not the facts. That is why myUsearch allows you to track your top school choices to see if they really are a match. One of our recent posts written by a top-tier student (http://myusearchblog.com/what-i-learned-about-college-admissions-getting-into-yale) was about her choice to apply to Yale at the last minute when she had her heart set on the University of Chicago. She was going to take on a ton of debt to go to the University of Chicago just because she gave into stereotypes about Yale. While I think its good to go through the websites of the schools you have in mind, you should try out a search as well to find out if there are any other options out there. College is a huge investment. You should do everything you can to double and triple check your choices.
October 7th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
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