<p>I am very happy to announce that CC has a very new, very exciting way to look for colleges: College</a> Search</p>
<p>This has been something we have wanted to do for years and have had under intense development for months. This is a beta launch, which means that it works but is still under development. </p>
<p>Our new College Search is unique. It features a matching algorithm that is more like, say, Google search, vs. a rigid database screen like past college search tools. For each school it finds, the searcher can see a percent match and the specific reasons why the school is on the match list. A "fuzzy" matching approach means that great matches are shown even if one criterion is a bit off.</p>
<p>Thanks are due...
Thanks to the CC members who were invited to a pre-launch test and provided us with valuable feedback. We incorporated many of their ideas in this beta version, and are continuing to work on others. Also thanks to Dave Berry and Sally Rubenstone, whose suggestions and feedback were instrumental in getting us to this point. And, of course, big thanks and congrats to the entire Hobsons development team who did the heavy lifting on this project.</p>
<p>Not bad. I popped in responses I would guess my younger daughter might have made and the Search came up with a number of colleges that are already on her radar – Emerson, Clark, Denison, Muhlenburg and Lafayette. But it also produced some outliers that I couldn’t see my daughter being interested in in a million years – Franciscan University of Steubenville and Grove City College for example. </p>
<p>All things considered, this is better than other most other college search programs I have encountered online but there are still some kinks to work out. My daughter is interested in a major in film & video at a smaller (2-7,000) college, for example, and for reasons I can’t figure out Ithaca College did not show up. The Search also indicated that Lafayette College does not offer a major in film; it does. Anyway, this does provide a student with a starting point, but it doesn’t provide a substitute for the much greater wealth of information available on the CC forums.</p>
<p>my computer yelled “uncle” on this one;;; kept freezing while I was trying to input…</p>
<p>one comment: it makes you choose one or the other (like public and private)…maybe there can be a default for “no preference”…same thing w size; maybe a kid wants larger than 2,000 but smaller than 10,000; doesn’t allow for two categories to be included.</p>
<p>Something that would make this tool different from anything currently available would be a “time-in-college minimizer” search. Insert a new field where a student could input his AP, CLEP,and DSST scores and find not only the most compatible schools, but the ones that would give the most credit for these tests.</p>
<p>Hi Rodney,
If you know exactly what you had selected when it “froze”, i’d be curious to try that. Can you also tell me what kind of web browser you are using, such as Internet Explorer ver. 7, etc.? Regarding the choice of school sizes, yeah, with the current choices provided, you cannot choose a range of exactly 2,000 - 10,000 schools, but you can check multiple ranges to combine them, so you can choose both “small” and “mid-size” to have a range of 2,000 - 13,000. Does that help?</p>
<p>Would be great to be able to print the list. I can’t grab the list anyway to print it…that way, you can print a few using different criteria and compare…</p>
<p>hudesonvalley51,
That search appears to result in far greater than 20 “100%” matches. We currently only show 20 matches at a time. If you go to the bottom of the results list, you’ll see a “Show More” link at the right-hand bottom of the list. If you click it, Ithaca College will appear in the 2nd page of results. Or you can enter additional criteria, like location, tuition and fees, etc. and as you get fewer matches, Ithaca should rise to the first page of results, assuming that you enter criteria values that match well to Ithaca. If that doesn’t help, or sparks another idea, please let me know. Thanks for the feedback!</p>
<p>Interesting… just tried this with my sophomore son who is actively starting to look for colleges… and it was either way too broad or way too narrow. </p>
<p>We’d also like to see a conservative leaning option. Why is liberal leaning there, but not conservative? In our real search we’re actively eliminating colleges that are known to be far left and far right preferring to be in the center, but right of center (or at least right tolerant).</p>
<p>Our real search also consists of minimum average SAT/ACT scores, but that’s not an option either.</p>
<p>Then our real search also consists of colleges that have ample research opportunities for undergrads - not an option on this search (nor any other we’ve found short of asking specifically).</p>
<p>Overall, this was interesting, but not really useful for our specific case.</p>
<p>I’m glad you guys actually listened to our input! (Fixed the ACT/SAT/GPA scrolling bars refreshing the pages)</p>
<p>Overall this is a great tool for people that have no idea on what colleges they might like (one girl received a softball related email from Amherst and ignored it because she had never heard of it). Personally I had made my college choices before this (through the extensive reading on CC) but I’m sure this would’ve cut my looking down immensely.</p>
<p>I hope you guys keep adding these great features to CC, I find myself recommending CC to more and more people. Reading CC has made me excited for college, keep up the good work.</p>
<p>Wow! This tool is impressive! I just filled it out very truthfully and the 100% matches were all the schools I am really, really interested in! And I added one from it too!</p>
<p>Definitely an impressive facility. But just for a lark, I put in Classics as an undergraduate major, top scores and grades, and Princeton, Pomona and Harvard came up but not Yale. Drilling further into the database I found that it was because Yale does not offer an undergraduate major in classics. Unfortunately this is not true. </p>
<p>Therefore, it’s going to be critical to get the underlying data more accurate before this impressive tool can be considered comprehensive or even truly useful. I imagine there are more such errors since this is the first one I even checked!</p>
<p>I thought it was very user friendly and fun - also quick - much quicker than going screen by screen as you do in the Naviance college search feature. </p>
<p>Suggest you allow people to select 2 options under size of student body - like in Naviance - where you can hold down the Ctl button and pick 2 from a category.</p>