Unigo Revisited

In a blog way back on December 1, 2010, I raved about a website, www.unigo.com, founded by Jordan Goldman who partnered with The Wall Street Journal to provide a free service where over 30,000 "college students tell you what colleges won't". If you aren't familiar with the site, it's definitely worth your time to explore it.

In the previous post I wrote about the interesting videos of panel discussions featuring college admissions personnel and administrators that are available on the site. They also provide rankings as to which schools, according to their findings, are the safest, most political, most intellectual etc. As part of the discussion on choosing a college, I'd like to revisit Unigo to discuss its college match and college search features. If you search a specific college by name, you will see an updated college profile containing information about size, cost, etc. and student reviews.

The college match feature is especially interesting. In less than thirty questions, the search seems to cover all the bases regarding cost, size, entrance difficulty, location, etc. but also addresses safety and social issues such as drugs and drinking. Questions are written in a very conversational style. A portion of one such question follows:

-Looking for a fresh start someplace new? Which of these fake communities seems to be calling your name?
o Carbon Copytown. Everyone here is very much alike. Blending in will be easy.
o Eclectic Falls. This quaint village is as diverse as it is fun and exciting.

Your results are updated as you answer each question. You're given a percentage of how well you match specific colleges which meet the criterion the question addressed. To keep your interest, the questions are sprinkled with little "factoids" like, "More women graduate from high school but more men have bachelor's degrees". Some questions allow you to select more than one answer. You can also find colleges by state and majors.

I presented the first post specifically addressing college search and matching tools in mid-January. That article focused on the search and match features on The College Board site, www.collegeboard.com. If you take one or, better yet, both of these inventories, you'll come away with some very good leads as to colleges that will meet your needs. Many schools have some kind of winter break coming up soon. Juniors should plan to use at least some of that time productively to advance their post high school plans.