Choosing A College, With Help From the Web
"Choosing a College, With Help From the Web"
Many high school students these days are turning to the internet and using search engines to find information about colleges. Sites such as The Princeton Review, the College Board, Kaplan, Thompson Peterson, and Counselor-O-Matic are helping students put together a list of potential colleges to consider. The site Counselor-O-Matic, which is offered by the Princeton Review, asks for academic information such as grades, class rank, SAT scores. However, the site also inquires about the students’ preferences for school size, surrounding environment, tuition fees, and other things of that nature. Sites like Counselor-O-Matic are free to students because they make money off advertising and by selling student information to potential colleges.
The U.S. has over 4,000 colleges and universities, and these sites are very good at narrowing down the choices for students so that they can find information on the schools which best fit their academic and social needs. It is also especially helpful for those students who seek very selective types of institutions. These search engines are also extremely helpful for those students who attend high schools where the ratio of students to counselors is very high.
College counselors, however, are not very enthusiastic about these sites. Most of them feel that while they are a good way to find preliminary information about potential universities, they are not good for actually choosing a final college to attend. This is because these search engines for the most part do not take into account each students particular emotions, campus cultures, and several other factors which can only be obtained through social interaction. For this reason, counselors are encouraging students to find large lists of potential colleges on these sites, and then to meet with them to discuss these colleges further.
Others however feel that these sites are adequate to use to pick out one’s college. And soon, many of these sites will be equipped with criteria that take into account students’ personal interests, emotions, campus lifestyle, and things of that nature. And with these types of changes, it is likely that there will be more and more students turning to the internet to help choose their future college.
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posted by jfight at 8:55:00 PM
2 Comments:
Selecting a college or university is a significant step in ones life. This choice will have an enormous impact on an individual and if an inadequate school is chosen problems could occur. While I find searching for information regarding universities and colleges online a fine idea, the selection of one exclusively based from this information could potentially have an unpleasant outcome. Physically visiting a campus is a unique, personal and intimate experience that cannot be replaced by virtual websites such as The College Board, Kaplan, Thompson Peterson, and Counselor-O-Matic. Understand that I do not discourage the use of these websites as tools or aides to assist parents, students and counselors in selecting a school but rather advocate the use of these websites in addition to gaining personal experience by speaking with professors and current students at a given university as well as taking advantage of college visitations.
Regards,
Michael
4:18 AM
I thik that it is funny that school guidance counselors are bitching over the fact that they finally realize thier job can be replaced by machines. I love what some of these interent sites have been able to do. The problem with the old method of going by other peoples opinions and infromation from guidance counselors is the fact that their own opinion is put into effect. These interent sites such as the princeton review are very professional and no biased based on advertisements or such. They simply create a list of schools that would best suit the persons wants and where they are able to attend and, in my option, the lists are very accurate. Obviously, I do not thing you should pick a school just based on what a computer spits out. The best option is to visit the school yourself and also talk to people you know who have been there. It is also always helpful to talk to the guidance counselor, however, I know from personal experience that some of these counselors are terrible, as was mine, and they may be no help at all. My couselor was mean and very disgruntled. I got the feeling that I was one of too many people that he had to meet on any given day and that he did not really care what I wanted. That is why I figured out for myself what schools would be good to attend.
6:34 PM
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