Kris Hintz’s Top Ten College Websites

If I had to name my ten “faves”, in no particular order, these sites would be the top bookmarks. I urge parents not to rely on any one source when researching schools, but to check out multiple websites, including the college websites themselves.

1. CollegeBoard.com. Not just for test registration! It offers portals for students, parents and professionals, with topics such as Plan for College, Find a College (college matching), Apply to College, and Pay for College (with calculators). And it’s free.

2. FinAid.org. Award-winning, free public service site that is a complete education in every kind of financial aid, demystifying Federal forms, offering calculators and everything needed for “regular people” without CPA’s to apply for financial aid!

3. MeritAid.com. This new free beta site gives lists of merit scholarships for colleges. You simply plug in a college you’re interested in, or search colleges by state. But if you are seriously interested in a school, thoroughly investigate its website, because some complicated programs are not picked up by this service. Meritaid.com is powered by Cappex.com, a college matching program.

4. USA Today “How to Make NSSE Work for You”. The National Survey of Student Engagement annually surveys students in 1300 colleges in the USA and Canada. It evaluates schools based on academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction, enriching educational experiences, and supportive campus environment. USA Today’s article shows results for schools willing to share their data, comparing each school to benchmarks for its institutional category.

5. UCAN.org. The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities developed U-CAN (the University and College Accountability Network), based on focus groups with students and families, to provide free, concise, common format, consumer-friendly college information.

6. US News & World Report College Rankings. It shouldn’t be the only ranking system you use, but it does give great stats in one place when you are researching and comparing colleges and universities. Premium membership (to get full information on every school) is $9.95 a year, but you only need it for a year.

7.  YouUniversityTV.com is a beta site with videos for over 400 colleges. Format is scripted, a painless way to absorb a school’s key facts, with interviews with college representatives. The “virtual tour” format portrays what it would be like walking the physical campus, which may encourage your family to actually visit the school—or not.

8. PrincetonReview.com. It’s not just about test prep and tutoring! It offers topics such as Colleges & Majors, School Search, Career Search, Study Abroad Programs, and Financial Aid (including College Values). It offers 162  rankings of colleges on a diverse range of categories, based on student surveys.

9. Kiplinger.com/money. The online version of Kiplinger’s personal finance magazine offers titles such as College & Family, Paying for College, and Best College Values. Check its Top 100 Best Values Rankings for public universities, private universities and liberal arts colleges.

10.  Colleges That Change Lives.org.  CTCL supports students finding schools that inspire a lifelong love of learning, based on Loren Pope’s book, Colleges That Change Lives, which describes 40 transformative colleges. The website gives profiles of the schools, which share two essential elements noted by Pope: “a familial sense of communal enterprise that gets students heavily involved in cooperative rather than competitive learning, and a faculty of scholars devoted to helping young people develop their powers, mentors who often become their valued friends.”

You do not need to be specifically interested in these 40 schools to gain valuable learning from the website. It offers a paradigm, a way of evaluating colleges, that is more intrinsic to the educational process than many ranking systems.