<p>for you pros who have done the college search- is there an accurate website about colleges via students- found college ******* but wasn’t sure if it was reliable-any others?</p>
<p>I haven’t found those kind of sites reliable at all because there’s no way to determine if those who post negative stuff are really students or former students of that particular school. Students from a rival school can always post negative stuff by pretending to be a student of the school. Yes, this happens! :(</p>
<p>Also, students who are responsible for their own negative experiences are not going to “own it” on such sites. Instead they will blame their school. Students also tend to use the words “a lot” for many things even if whatever they’re talking about is an infrequent occurrence. And, since many students have only attended one college, they will often complain about things that are common nearly all schools. </p>
<p>I also am very careful when I read rate my professors . com. If there are a lot of posts about a teacher, then it’s easier to discern if a student’s negative post is genuine or was the result of a lazy student who didn’t do the work. If there are just a few posts about a teacher and the reviews are mixed, it’s hard to tell.</p>
<p>I sort of agree with M2CK in that in using these sites for my son’s search, I found them to be somewhat accurate. The most obvious thing that I found was that the larger the college, the larger the postings and the larger the postings, the more accurate the depiction of the subject matter. Also, for some of the smaller colleges, there were postings out there that were prety old and because of that, found them to be innaccurate once we did our tours and fact finding. So, as M2CK states they were not very reliable. </p>
<p>One troubling thing that we encountered, was that some of these sites did tip us off to a problem area as far as a particular college was concerned, and when we tried to get that problem area addressed with admissions, they kind of ducked and ran. In the end, it did help somewhat with the college search, but be careful not to put too much belief in the postings. Ask questions of admissions, and then you may be better able to discern what is fact and fiction.</p>
<p>thanks alot</p>
<p>There are also great books (library and bookstores) that do a great job of giving you a snapshot of universities/colleges…both campus life and academics including average GPA’s, SAT’s AP’s of incoming freshman class. After visiting almost 20 universities/colleges (2 kids with different interests) I can say that they were pretty accurate. Interesting though, that both ended up at Bama!</p>
<p>we have the Fiske guide- thanks</p>
<p>Does anyone know why some of these annual college guides use information from several years ago, rather than updated info that is widely available from the universities?</p>
<p>The guides are published so far in advance, the stats are outdated. For example, the 2011 guides will be coming out shortly. At best, they can use admissions stats from two years ago as this year’s stats are not out.</p>
<p>As to the student reviews on the internet, I give them 0% credibility. They are unverified, oftentimes come from rival/competing schools, and the most likely posters are disgruntled students with an axe to grind. If you have 99% happy and they do not post and the 1% unhappy spew their venom, you get a very distorted picture of reality.</p>
<p>^^^Well said, Riggo. Ratings are overrated.</p>
<p>To quote from a wonderful TIME magazine article (“Who Needs Harvard?”), college is a match to be made, not a prize to be won. For those interested, the article can be found at: [Who</a> Needs Harvard? - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1226150,00.html]Who”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1226150,00.html)</p>