<p>Just a note from a enthusiastic parent of a entering freshman. AU’s website can be very frustrating to navigate and too often contains outdated information. I’m pretty good at online research and I find myself unable to find information on AU’s website that should be easy. I know that my D has been frustrated looking for academic information and that accepted students are having difficulty finding enrollment info. Certainly a university that takes pride in it’s School of Communication should be able to produce a website with more intuitive navigation and a friendlier user interface. Hopefully someone in the admin will take note and address the issue.</p>
<p>Indeed, it is difficult to navigate.</p>
<p>A lot of stuff is weirdly located, say, under the Office of the Provost.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to the Gen Ed stuff, for example.</p>
<p>[General</a> Education Program](<a href=“http://www.american.edu/provost/gened/index.cfm]General”>American University Washington D.C.)</p>
<p>I don’t disagree–crafting a good website seems to be huge challenge to many organizations–but I did want to point out that once students are actually attending AU, the website is pretty much irrelevant to their lives. So this is a short-term issue.</p>
<p>I agree. When my daughter was looking at schools, I was very turned off by AU’s website when so many of the other schools had wonderful, user-friendly websites. However, now that she is a very happy freshman, she seems to be fine with using the student portal and other online resources. It does seem like they could do something to upgrade their website, at least for marketing purposes.</p>
<p>Pushydad, you have now discovered the two things I know of that AU does badly. The admissions office does not do a good job notifying applicants in the spring. (It was really a train wreck in 2011. If it’s been as bad in '12 and '13, I haven’t seen that reflected on CC, but I wouldn’t have first-hand knowledge, either.) And the web site is a mess.</p>
<p>On the plus side though, my daughter, who’s a freshman after taking a gap year, has been making friends, having fun, and learning stuff in her classes. Those things are definitely higher on my list than web-site architecture.</p>
<p>I agree, the AU web site needs much improvement, but as others have stated above, the students find that there is an amazing amount of activities that the school offers on-campus, as well as tons of stuff to do off-campus in DC. You will never be bored at AU.</p>
<p>Very excited that S3 was accepted! I agree their website is not very user friendly. I love to dig for information, but am getting frustrated with their website.</p>