<p>I finally looked at this site, kind of amazing that I hadn't before, considering all the research I've done. It is very, verrrrrry interesting. Looked up all of the US schools to which S applied, and it was a confirmation of much that I have heard about these colleges elsewhere.</p>
<p>I encourage everyone who has not already done so to send their S or D to this site prior to making a final decision about where to attend. The comments by students and alumni are usually quite informative, and it may even alter your opinion about a college. </p>
<p>You know how, as parents, we try to be as objective as possible and not select favorites based on "cherished notions?" Well, you might imagine that your child will manage to hit the sweet spot any place they go, but many of these comments reveal the less attractive aspects of the place. Some of the students are really disillusioned and bitter - ouch! ("Ouch!" = some parents paid for it AND the student spent four years suffering).</p>
<p>The site does not require students to show their arm tatoo before posting, so caveat emptor, but many of the comments are quite detailed and seem unlikely to be from a person who hasn't attended the school.</p>
<p>Check it out, post back here. Ivies comparison is a little excursion all by itself.</p>
<p>The comments are interesting but statistically invalid for almost all of the schools since there are so few reviews posted. However some schools do have lots of reviews. Especially check out the list of most reviewed schools on the first page - ESPECIALLY Pensacola Christian College (hours of pure entertainment).</p>
<p>I do agree that it's worth a look. Some things can surface there that you might not know, but also keep in mind that sometimes you may get more interest in posting from the disgruntled ones.</p>
<p>Other sites worth a look are Campus Dirt, Epinions (though mostly older reviews), and College-specific livejournals. Oh and Rate Your Professor just to get a feel of who'll be teaching at certain classes</p>
<p><em>I love studentsreview - and only wish more students would give their 2 cents. Some of those reviews helped me make my decisions last year as to which colleges I wanted to apply to - especially as I became more and more disenchanted with CC because of the biases - and the continualy, heavy emphasis on the Ivy's and the constant, almost stringent push from certain members/factions for specific schools (i.e. Colgate, Swarthmore, Wesleyan...) - I ended up becoming very distru</em>***l of the info I got on this site...studentreviews was a breath of fresh air.</p>
<p>Crash, I appreciate your viewpoint. The CC can get obsessive about certain schools, but I think more so on the student's forums. But I agree with a previous poster that for many schools, the studentsreview doesn't have enough responses to be statistically significant. Was this the case with the schools you looked at, and if so how did you try to validate the observations.</p>
<p>Ihave looked at that site and judging from schools I am familar with, I think it is fairly accurate. I like to hear the students opinions whether I know them or not ( although I can tell that some of D's friends have posted reviews & they appear to be thoughtful and well stated)</p>
<p>Type in the college's name in "Search" . For category, use the drop down menu and highlight "interest". It will then show you if there are any specific communities existing for that college, plus give you a list of lj users who have listed "x college" as one of their interests.</p>
<p>Iderochi - re: studentsreview - I wasn't really concerned about statistical significance - and I was cognizant that those who liked a school and those who didn't like one would paint very strong pictures to mirror their feelings - however, certain issues got touched on that are really rarely discussed/or simply glossed over in the college handbooks - such as level of drugs/alcohal; the preponderance of preps, cross-dressers, gays, reactionaries; which schools were overly conservative or uber liberal; how many on-campus suicides there were or how competitive the students are with each. Many schools that were highly touted on CC came up looking quite poorly on studentsreview and that includes the Ivy's...where there were always complaints about being taught by grad assistants because the tentured profs are too busy with their own research or publications; that you can't understand many profs because English is their second language and their accents are terrible; that people have their noses in the book constantly and have poor social skills - or conversely, it's a big time party school and no one is there to study at all and because the courses aren't rigorous, no one has to anyway.
Just little tidbits floated to the surface that intrigued me and - upon closer examination - I found many of these to be spot on...</p>
<p>I personally think Livejournal is one of the best ways to actually connect with REAL current students. My daughter has made a few connections via email from kids she has found on livejournal at various schools. What's interesting is that I've found that if you read the livejournals for several schools over a period of time, you actually start picking up a sense of the feel of the school just by the way the students interact with each other on livejournal and what they are concerned about. Example: at one school the students complain about the administration quite a bit but no one ever seems to suggest doing anything about their complaints. At another school, students also complain but then discuss what actions they can take to change the situation (petitions, protests, meetings with the president, etc.). At another school's livejournal, the main discussion is about parties on campus. I found this a fascinating bit of cultural anthropology. </p>
<p>The only caution I would give is that, like all other web sites, the livejournal posters are not necessarily a statistically relevant sample of the school's population...and some of those individual journals can be pretty disturbing to read. But, overall, a great way to connect with current students and read about the daily life on campus.</p>