How to Get a Feel for Schools Besides Visiting

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hello,</p>

<p>I have done my fair share of visiting schools, but I am curious as to resources that can be helpful to get a feel for schools and virtually 'visit' schools. For various reasons, many people are not able to visit a school before applying to it, so narrowing down a college list can become difficult. What are the best ways to go about doing this?
Thanks for the input.</p>

2

<p>One way is to talk to current students at your colleges of interest. Your high school college counselor or possibly your high school’s alumni association may be able to identify students who currently attend the college.</p>

3

<p>Well since I cannot visit colleges at the moment, I go to sites like college ******* that actually have ranks of different things such as “best looking campus”, “best nightlife”, “best academics”, “best on campus food” etc.</p>

<p>Don’t know if that helps, but…that’s what I am doing at the moment.</p>

<p>ok…so part of the site listed won’t show up. Bummer :(. I really don’t know what to do there. Just look up different college ranks. Sorry about that!!</p>

4

<p>Too bad the Collegiate Choice videos no longer are available:</p>

<p>[Collegiate</a> Choice Walking Tours Videos - college videos, campus tours, virtual college tours, college planning,](<a href=“http://www.collegiatechoice.com/]Collegiate”>http://www.collegiatechoice.com/)</p>

5

<p>the website wontgetin was talking about is college p-r-o-w/l-e-r (Ignore the dashes and the slash) There you can learn a lot more about your college.</p>

6

<p>youvisit dot com has a lot of walking tours, photos and 360 tours</p>

7

<p>Another vote for the c<em>p</em> website. Other good sources:

  • Fiske Guide to Colleges
  • The college websites themselves. And some have a “virtual tour” on the website. There is so much good info on the websites – college campus maps, each academic department often has their own website, and you can often get at the campus newspaper online – the newspaper can be a goldmine of info that the college doesn’t really want you to see. :smiley:
  • The common data set for the college (search “<college name=”"> common data set"
  • The individual college forums on CC. We read way back (lots and lots of threads) on the schools D2 was interested in. You obviously can’t read them all on the more popular schools, but for smaller schools you can get through all the conversations in a short time.
  • If you live near a larger city, sometimes colleges have events for prospective students.</college></p>
8

<p>Google Maps Street view. The little yellow man is your friend.</p>

9

<p>Google street view and college prow.ler are gonna be your best friend this college season</p>

10

<p>Google street view is gonna be your best friend for this. Use that and Youtubr videos of the campus’s freshman week. I always do that</p>

11

<p>Colle *******!!!</p>

12

<p>Wouldn’t put too much stock into <that website="">…anyone could vote for any school for whatever the ‘ranking’ might be.</that></p>

13

<p>If a school isn’t extremely well known across the country, the majority of posters are probably students. I wouldn’t place much stock into Harvard’s CP and un1go reviews, but I’ve read many reviews of Emory and OU and both match up to my experiences.</p>

14

<p>In addition to the suggestions above, you can read some guide books (Fiske, Insiders Guide, Princeton Review). And some schools have local alumni do interviews so you can try arrange for a few of those.</p>

15

<p>If it is a big party school, it should have an “I’m Shmacked” video (either on YouTube or their website). Depending on your tastes, your school having a video can be a good or bad thing haha.</p>

16

<p>Go online to the campus newspaper and read online. You will got a lot of the campus news and buzz by doing that, especially the columns, editorials and letters to the editor.</p>

17

<p>We found a lot just by looking on You Tube – doesn’t need to be official college sanctioned to get a feel of the schools.</p>

18

<p>If you are looking at large schools, know how the area votes.</p>