<p>Son is a HS junior and now that we have his first ACT score (disappointing as it is) I think he (and me, behind the scenes) are ready to begin compiling a list of colleges. I know we are a little behind the times, as many of you with HS juniors are several steps ahead, but better late than never. So my question is, I know that US News has a subscription thing that gives a lot (or they say a lot) of information about colleges. Does anyone have a favorite site? I am willing to pay, if it's worth it.</p>
<p>The best site you'll find is right here - the Parents forum of CC ;).</p>
<p>If you post your sons interests and stats, you'll get a lot of thoughtful and useful advice.</p>
<p>one of the first online sites I visited was collegeboard's website (but that of course was before I discovered CC!) they include a lot of info on thousands of schools and can you set up profile searches to find colleges that match your requirements.</p>
<p>nngmm: Do not worry, I have every intention of making use of this resource. But while you all may be wise, you are not exactly efficient! What I'm thinking of is a way to get just basic information about colleges--enrollment, admitted student stats, cost, and maybe info about particular extracurriculars (whether the college has a pep band, for example), whether housing is guaranteed for four years, etc.</p>
<p>scansmom: I'll check out the collegeboard site; thanks.</p>
<p>Agree with nngmm!</p>
<p>That said a useful, easy-to-use, and free website is the IPEDS Cool database -- reams of statistics from every college and university in the U.S. College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics</p>
<p>For information on individual colleges, I like Wikipedia, too. Just be aware that anyone can edit or add information to Wikipedia entries, so you have to do your own follow-up research, especially if something seems amiss.</p>
<p>For general info about schools Fiske Guide to Colleges is a pretty good resource. </p>
<p>As for CB search function - I had a pretty good idea what schools would fit my Ds quest, but tried to use it, just to see if we missed something. The list that came up seemed completely random, and did not include any of the schools she ultimately decided to apply to, even though all of them fit the criteria I entered...</p>
<p>petersons.com has a good one. Plus DD went to a college fair and picked up anything with soccer, outdoor activities or horses featured prominently on the cover. This brought several good schools to their attention early on.</p>
<p>The other thing we did was when we started planning a visit trip I posted on CC to see if there were other schools in the area that might be worth a look too. That's how we "found" Willamette and Linfield.</p>
<p>We really liked the Princeton Review college search engine, as well as the way they present the info about the schools.</p>
<p>Many of us have used the US News & World Report paid edition. It gives most of the basic numbers; costs about $15.00. The year starts in August, though, and there's no pro-rating. You may want to wait until then to join.</p>
<p>I liked the collegeboard matchmaker, but you do have to be careful in selecting some of the criteria for your search or you can unintentionally exclude schools that don't report certain statistics or because categories don't mean exactly what you think they do.</p>
<p>Collegedata.com is fun to play with. Of course, the data is self reported, so it's hard to know how reliable it is, but (like CC) I feel like I can sniff out the posers. Also, it seems a little harsh in its predictions to me, but I think that's because the data it collects is so limited. So I think you can "tune" up or down a bit depending on EC's and unaccounted for honors.</p>
<p>We worked backward after D had selected school that were of interest to her (by other means). The only collegesearch program that gave her all 4 schools she ended up applying to was Princeton Review. Some never even matched her up with one school!</p>
<p>with peterson's site and the search engine there you can sort schools by entrance difficulty. we found this to be very helpful as it gives you a broader picture of the schools that are similar to one another in selectivity.</p>
<p>some helpful books were "Peterson's Competitive Colleges" and "The Fiske Guide."</p>
<p>Fiske Guide for its superb capsule descriptions. Read them outloud in the car as you drive up for a campus visit. Read between the lines. They are very informative.</p>
<p>The $15 USNEWS on-line subscription is well worth it just to have all the data available at your fingertips -- diversity numbers, financial aid numbers, SAT scores, yadda yadda.</p>
<p>Learn how to find a college's Commond Data Set and on-line Factbook. Lots of info.</p>