Thomas Lipsmeyer, a high-school senior with a talent for the tenor sax, plays in every instrumental ensemble in his school and practices nearly five hours a day. So when he decided that he wanted to go to a college with a strong music program, he applied the same discipline to the college-search process.
He logged on to the Internet, searched online databases for colleges with music majors and came up with 30 that seemed to match his criteria. He visited the colleges’ Web sites, scanning for photos or news stories that would show devotion to the subject he loved. He pored over online statistics of placement rates, data that told him how often a college’s graduates found jobs.
After months of research, he narrowed his choices to three, including two colleges he had never heard of when he started.
“I don’t think I could have done it without the Web,” said Lipsmeyer, who attends Parkersburg South High School in West Virginia. “I probably would have selected West Virginia University and just gone there. I wouldn’t have heard anything about other colleges because they were out of state.”
But not everything about the process worked to his liking. As he did his online research, some sites asked him to fill out registration forms and disclose his e-mail and home addresses.
“Ever since I did that,” he said, sounding annoyed, “I’ve been getting an awful lot of mail about opportunities to join the Army, Navy and Air Force.” Was this something he was interested in? “No,” he said without hesitation.
College-bound students across the country, and in some cases around the world, are experiencing the same mix of euphoria and frustration. Many rave about how the Web is making the search for a college easier than ever.
Using online software, students looking for a college can highlight preferences like location, cost or size on an online questionnaire and instantly receive lists of colleges tailored to their criteria.
Of the several Web sites that offer search software, including Embark.com, Collegeboard.com and CollegeQuest.com, many even enable students to conduct side-by-side comparisons of college data, store that information in personalized online lockers and click on a few buttons to send e-mail requests to the colleges of their choice.
On their Web sites, colleges often provide an in-depth look at academic departments and student clubs. Many offer e-mail chats with professors and students. College newspapers maintain their own Web sites with archives of stories about life on campus. Articles, rankings and virtual tours abound — and all are free.
No longer do students have to sit in a library flipping through college guidebooks (most of which are usually in the reference section, where they cannot be checked out). No longer are they dependent on their parents and guidance counselors to point them to a particular university.
“The power has shifted to the student when it comes to research,” said Phil Dunkelberger, chief executive and president of Embark.com.
But in coursing through the online terrain, students are also finding its pitfalls. In many cases, the Web sites are free because they are supported by advertising and e-commerce partners, companies that provide commissions to Web sites that help them sell products to students.
And if free Web sites do not display much advertising, they make money another way: They collect contact information by using registration forms and then sell the students’ addresses to colleges and sometimes to commercial entities like banks, long-distance companies and textbook shops.
In most cases, the registration forms allow students to opt out of such marketing instead of allowing them to request only the material they are interested in. To avoid unsolicited marketing messages, a student must erase a check mark next to a statement like “Yes. Please pass my name to companies that can provide me with information that can help.” In many cases, students will not even realize that by leaving those boxes checked, they may be opening the floodgates of print or e-mail advertising.
With the Web’s outpouring of college information comes another problem: the outpouring of college information. Unless students search for colleges using very specific criteria, for example, online software programs will list hundreds of matches. Several guidance counselors have said that they are finding themselves in more demand, not less, as students and parents troop into their offices asking about colleges they had never heard of before they saw them online.
Just as the Web has made medical patients both more informed and more confused about health-care options, some high-school guidance counselors say it has done the same for students and parents who are shopping for a college.
“I’ll talk to parents who start by saying, `Well, I’ve been researching this on the Internet,”‘ said Diane Bower, Lipsmeyer’s guidance counselor. “They are much more knowledgeable,” she said, but they are still looking for advice.
Peterson’s, the educational publishing company that runs CollegeQuest.com, is planning to provide online access to a new set of data. The service, called Best College Picks, is based on research from the Institute for Research on Higher Education, which has surveyed nearly 40,000 people about their jobs, their values and how they spend their time. The new service will ask students what kind of people they want to be and will then retrieve names of colleges that have already turned out graduates that match those types.
“It will, I hope, make the student a more informed shopper,” said Robert Zemsky, director of the institute and leader of the research project, which was financed by the federal Education Department and other organizations.
Parents can take heart, however, in knowing that while the Internet may be the chosen medium for research on colleges, Mom and Dad still have an impact on students’ decisions about which colleges to attend. A recent survey called StudentPoll, which queried more than 400 college-bound students, showed that information from parents, current students and college admissions staff exerted more influence than Web sites over college choice. And nearly 70 percent of respondents said that actually stepping foot on campus was most important.
“Looking at the Web is a good way to get a basic feel for the college,” said Leah Welsh, who decided to enroll at Earlham College in Indiana after spending a day touring its small campus and noticing the diversity of students there. “But you have to go visit it to really decide.”
For students who are starting their college searches, several Web sites offer one-stop shops that include searchable databases of college information, test-preparation aids, virtual tours and online applications. Here are some of the leading sites:
– The College Board, www.collegeboard.com : Features online registration for the SAT and help with essay preparation.
– Collegelink, www.collegelink.com: Offers a month-by-month planner and articles about financial aid.
– Collegenet, www.collegenet.com: The CollegeBot search engine looks at college-related Web sites.
– Peterson’s Collegequest, www.collegequest.com: Includes a personal organizer, practice tests for the SAT and ACT, and discussion groups.
– Embark, www.embark.com: Offers online “lockers” where students can store applications in progress and results of searches.
– CPNET and U-Wire, www.cpnet.com, www.uwire.com: News from college newspapers around the country.
– Fastweb, www.fastweb.com: A database of scholarships and grants.
– National Center for Education Statistics/IPEDS College Opportunities Online, www.nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cool: A database of 9,000 colleges. Students can search for colleges based on a profile of the types of schools they are interested in.
