How many colleges can you name?  Ten? Fifty? One hundred? Two hundred?  Most people can't go beyond the two hundred school number, yet there are over 3,000 four year colleges in the U.S. alone.  So how can you hope to search through this pile of potential schools to find the one that is right for you?  Fortunately for you someone invented the internet.  If you check out my guide to online college search tools you will find links to several of the most useful free tools you can use to find colleges that fit your needs and interests. Many of these sites have useful search tools to help you quickly generate a list of interesting prospective colleges.  From this list you can start doing research, which often starts by visiting the college website for each school of interest.

I want to draw your attention, however, to three sites which can help you research your list of prospective schools and supplement what you are likely to find on the colleges' own websites.  The first of the three is College Navigator.  This site is provided by the U.S. Dept. of Education, and while it has a search tool, its real strength is the standard enrollment, retention and graduation, cost and financial aid information provided.  If you are concerned about paying for college, this site will allow you to compare the degree to which various colleges contribute institutional grant aid to make their colleges more affordable, and how much of that aid is directed toward need based vs. merit based aid.

The second site, U-Can.org, is a response for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities to a recent Dept. of Education report calling for more accountability and transparency in higher education.  This organization encouraged all of its members to provide information in a standard format, making comparisons between institutions easier for prospective students and their families.  Over 700 private colleges now participate, so chances are good that you can learn a great deal from this site about many of your prospective colleges.

 The third site I want to draw to your attention is so new it is still in Beta testing as of this writing, but it is still worth a look.  The site is unigo.com, and it is an attempt to use Web 2.0 social networking to create a wealth of information about every college in the country.  Current students are encouraged to add reviews of their schools, and a number of generally helpful articles are being posted on how to choose, pay for and succeed in college.  What most sets this site apart, however, are the current student reviews.  You can use this site to get another set of opinions about what it is like being a student at each of the colleges you are considering. As with any social networking site, the opinions expressed by students are just their opinions, but if enough reviews are posted on a particular school you can get some sense of how satisfied students are at that school.  Perhaps more helpful are the small insights about what features make each school unique, and the reflections on what it feels like to be a student there.