Best and Worst College Websites

<p>I write websites for a living, and I've been shocked at how bad some of the college sites are. They seem to be talking to parents (or school administration) and not to the kids at all. Do kids read the websites? Which are the best/worst? </p>

<p>For example: My d loved the Harvey Mudd site, hmc.edu, which has a photo of visiting lecturer Bill Gates and mentions of water polo and a t-shirt ontest on the home apge. Hated the MIT site, which shows famous graduates (all at least 50 years old). </p>

<p>Which websites did you love/hate? Did they change your opinion of the school at all?</p>

<p>Well I really hate the websites where you have to dig for the information. Even simple checks on academics can sometimes take 5 clicks which is annoying. I had the hardest time trying to get information on tuition fees for Peppedine. The search button is ridiculous and pulls up many tangents.</p>

<p>Like: UChicago, MIT, Tufts, Vassar, Reed, Mount Holyoke, Vanderbilt</p>

<p>Dislike: Yale, Columbia</p>

<p>Hunting around for information on financial aid can be daunting, it should be easier to find on a lot of these college websites.</p>

<p>I would love to see all colleges have a link to their common data set on either their home page or at least on their admissions home page. Easy access to this information would eliminate the need for >50% of the threads here on cc. I don’t imagine many (any?) schools would ever consider this, but a guy can dream.</p>

<p>Totally agree. It’s so hard to find things. </p>

<p>I like Mt Holyoke’s site, btw. Very student friendly.</p>

<p>It may sound trivial, but I really like a college web site that includes at least one live cam. It can give you a little bit of a feel of being there. It is not as good as visiting but better than just still images.</p>

<p>Visit ten college websites and see how quickly you can find out what the places cost. The cost of attendance is so buried on some sites that about the only way you can find it is the A-Z directory.</p>

<p>university of florida has a terrible website. i’ve had to go on it several times due to my job at a tutoring/college prep center in florida and it’s still annoying to use.</p>

<p>their website url isn’t even intuitive. you’d expect it to be uf.edu or florida.edu, not ufl.edu. at least uf.edu reroutes to the website, but it looks like FIU stole florida.edu lol</p>

<p>Emerson College has great videos on their website and the layout of the site is very good. Also like UT Austin and Rollins websites. I like the blogs or journals that students post on the sites especially if their CC board is not very active. I have to think about the ones I don’t like but there are plenty that I’ve seen in looking at different colleges my kids have looked into.</p>

<p>Williams College sent an email to my son and asked him to visit its website. We did, but the experience was not good. Williams is ranked as number one LAC in the country, but many links on its website do not lead to the indicated information.</p>

<p>My d had that problem with Barnard. They sent a mailing about a summer program, but when she went online the info was from the previous year. Seems like if they are going to spend all that money, they should have their links updated.</p>