LET YOUR COMPUTER DO THE DRIVING CampusTours.com, which links to video tours of about 1,000 schools. The videos are mostly housed at the schools' own Web sites, so expect glossy presentations that highlight the good.
COLLEGE ADMISSION TIPS WHAT PRICE COLLEGE ADMISSION?
WHAT PRICE COLLEGE ADMISSION? Parents are spending tens of thousands on advisers to shape their kids.Warning. Anyone can set up shop as a counselor because the field is unregulated and practitioners are not required to have experience in college admission or high school counseling. Business Week, June 19, 2006, Pages 82-82.
SEE SELECTING A LAW SCHOOL LINKS
The U.S. Departmnet of Education has the website APPLYING FOR ADMISSION. This website provides links to relevant websites.
APPLICATIONS AND ADMISSIONS is a short article describing the application and admission process along with defining some terms related to admissions.
GATHERING INFORMATION MATCHMAKING SERVICES
The U.S. Department of Education has COOL (College Opportunities Online Locator), a direct link to nearly 7000 colleges and universities in the United States. After inputing your preferences and restrictions (almost ten of them), COOL will output the colleges that meet your preferences and restrictions.
CollegeBoard.com has COLLEGE MATCHMAKER which uses six questions to narrow down your choices of possible colleges. Unfortunately with six questions (none involving GPA or test scores) not much narrowing done can be done.
YAHOO website seems to do a decent job of college matchmaking.
COUNSELOR-O-MATIC, according to Princeton Review, "is an advanced search engine that combines your academic and extracurricular history with your preferences to help you find the right college." This website is just about worthless because Conselor-O-Matic is clearly biased in favor of private schools especially private religious schools (money must be changing hands).
MATCHMAKING SERVICES CREATING A USEFUL ONE
The college matchmaking services just discussed leave a lot to be desired. We now make some suggestions for an improved college match making service. Needless to say, to be of any value, this service must be unbiased. Also every question asked should be relevant (that is, for each question asked, some possible answers will lower, raise, or eliminate some colleges. Below, for each topic listed , we give a website that handles this topic well.
ACTIVITIES. See PRINCETON REVIEW which has some ideas on this topic but see YAHOO for intercollegiate sport teams.
ALLOW FOR MORE THAN JUST A YES/NO ANSWER WHEN POSSIBLE. See PRINCETON REVIEW, where five choices are given for some questions.
EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES. Both Intramural sports and intramural sports are handled well by YAHOO. Academic-related extra-curricular activities should also be considered.
MALE/FEMALE RATIO. The question should read, "Answer the two questions on the first line or the two questions on the second line and no more; each of your answers should be an integer between 0 and 100. Minimum percentage of females desired Maximum percentage of females desired Minimum percentage of males desired Maximum percentage of males desired.
Add any schools that you think you might like to attend based on your prior knowledge (from friends, family, teachers, etc.). CHANGE
If you decide you're not so fond of a school after all?cross it off you list. If you come upon a new school that strikes your fancy, add it! If you think you've misclassified a school, move it to the more appropriate category. Talk with your parents about the schools on your list. You don't want there to be any surprises later on.
As you gather and absorb more information, your list of possible colleges to attend will very likely gain some colleges and lose some colleges. This is to be expected. OWN
