<p>hello, i'm wondering what you think of these online college search tools that are showing up. they survey the student with questions and then locate a colleges they think are good fits. Princeton review has the Counselor-O-Matic, there's one called PICS (that asks some interesting questions), Kaplan, Gocollege.com...I've found a ton of them. For families without access to good college counseling, i'm wondering if you think these sorts of online surveys are a good way to go or a risky way to go? like has anyone had any experiences with them? I'd really appreciate it if you could reply or even check them out (jsut google online college tools or something of the like). thanks so much!</p>
<p>The Collegeboard's search feature is one of the best I think.</p>
<p>These search tools are a good place to start. They'll give you a list of schools for you to research. Same with the guides, like Fiske's. One school leads you to another, to another, and so on. But don't rely on them, or on any one secondary guide.</p>
<p>peterson's college search website is helpful. you can search by level of admissions selectivity and gpa as well as other criteria. sat/act ranges are noted too.</p>
<p>Princeton Review's Counselor-O-Matic is known to give results that are too easy, meaning that the colleges it lists are often much harder to get into than they lead one to believe. It is a good place to start, as is their tool that shows other similar schools, but do not believe their safety, match and reach categories.</p>
<p>Like previous posters, our family found these search tools a useful place to begin their college searches, just to get some starting points. We also used them when the colleges lists were nearly complete, just to make sure we hadn't missed something obvious. (We hadn't.) The principal limitation is that (a) you'll probably get too many responses back, and (b) that the search tools aren't helpful when you're looking for something at the borderline. For example, both daughters wanted a school with about 10,000 undergraduates. That was "large" for the medium-sized category and "small" for the large-university category. </p>
<p>PS, We had the best luck starting with a couple schools each liked, then using the "students who applied to this school also applied to and sometimes preferred" college listings in Princeton Review.</p>
<p>Katie,</p>
<p>I hope you will be able to visit colleges once you have narrowed your lists. It is so easy for colleges to show you their best side with their marketing tools, and it is difficult to figure out the culture of a school from guides or from search features. We found, like NewHope33, that Princeton Review was helpful, but there is nothing like the first-hand experience.</p>
<p>The Counselor-o-matic didn't give good correlations of reach/match/safety schools. What it did do, which was essential for us, was to give us some more ideas of types of schools to look for. Based on that search we found a number of smaller universities - much smaller than the state U and perhaps twice as large or more than liberal arts colleges. That list formed an important part of our selection strategy and in fact our S is going to one of them.</p>
<p>I found the search engines good for getting the kids to realize what they might want in a college by making them think about things like size, location, etc. It's amazing how many colleges there are to choose from. Sometimes if you can knock out a whole slew of them by realizing that you don't like one factor, it helps narrow down the search.</p>
<p>I don't think that the search engines like Counselor-o-matic or the CB one are very effective...it seems to me that time and time again MIT showed up in my results. There is one book that I would definitely recommend buying in lieu of depending on the search engines...College P-R-O-W-L-E-R's (<< why is it blocking this word??!) The Big Book of Colleges '07. It doesn't have every institution in the US, like perhaps a Princeton Review guide book would, but I found it to the the most comprehensive, fresh, and helpful college guide book I have ever encountered. I think the best part is that it pulls quotes from students and it is very honest about the campus dining, facilities, dorms, drug scence, general 'attractiveness' of the student body, etc. If you can't afford to make a lot of trips (like I couldn't), this book is definitely a good way to start narrowing down your list. Sorry for the shameless plugging, but this book really was pretty awesome, and it is rare that I would find a college guide book that could actually pique my interest.</p>
<p>As a parent, I found the college search engines to be very useful in identifying a variety of schools for my son to investigate. I agree that Collegeboard and Princeton Review were among the best. I especially liked the quick info that you could get. As far as books, my son especially liked the Yale Daily News Insider Guide - written by students based on interviews with students. It helped narrow down the possibilities to a workable number. It sounds much like the book j07 couldn't name.</p>
<p>Anyway, we started with the online search engines, went on to the books (Fiske, Princeton Review, etc.), then to the schools' own web sites.</p>