Great websites to direct your college search
College is a huge investment of time and money, and choosing the right school and major are two of the more important decisions you’ll make in life. Making the wrong choice can, at best, lead to academic struggles and dissatisfaction with your higher education experience. At worst, it can affect employability and future career success.
Too often, I hear from students who chose a school for the wrong reasons ? just because a buddy went there, for example, or solely because it has an on-base presence. As an education writer, I’m always on the lookout for Web resources that can make decisions about college easier and better-informed for prospective students.
Unfortunately, the volume of education-related sites available on the Web is overwhelming ? and it’s often difficult to tell the difference between legitimate sites with useful information and unscrupulous ones that lure prospective students in with misinformation to get their money.
That’s why it was so great to come across Lynn O’Shaughnessy?s recent blog post on U.S. News & World Report with her choices for the Top 10 college websites. Most of the sites she highlights have data about thousands of schools, as well as advice on how to fund one?s higher education. But O’Shaughnessy has some fun, too ? a favorite of mine, for example, is Unigo, which as she puts it, “serves up the unvarnished scoop on schools from the students themselves.”
I highly recommend you read O’Shaughnessy?s blog entry, and bookmark each of the sites she profiles.
