By Emily Torres
15 October 2008

There are a million colleges to visit. No one has the time or money to go see them all. As the amount of college applications grow, the guidebooks and reviews of colleges are also growing. Most of these guides are full of information that comes straight from the press department of the actual school. The colleges control the PR: everything you see and read about their schools.

Until now.

Unigo.com is the first site that only features reviews from high-school and college students. This makes Unigo.com the first college review site to feature impartial, unbiased reviews. And all of the information is free.

The site boasts reviews of over 267 colleges, and all of the reviews are provided by actual students at those schools. Because who knows the school better than the students that attend?

Unigo.com doesn’t even want to hear from the colleges. They started receiving reviews over a year ago under an Internet alias. They include any review that they receive, whether it’s videos, photos, or writing—even if the review is not-“PC.” The editors at Unigo.com figure it’s important that future students know about all types of people who go there, even those who are not so politically correct.

Another great way to visit campuses for free is the virtual college tour. CampusExplorer.com provides photos, videos, maps, and reviews to allow prospective students to get a good idea of what each potential school is like. New features on CampusExplorer.com include side-by-side institution comparison; comprehensive behavior and history tracking modules; personalized educational profile tailoring and admissions chance analysis.

These new features are meant to take the place of a college advisor. They will help students understand what they want in a school, as well as which schools will meet their personal interests, financial capabilities, and grade expectations. The side-by-side college comparison allows visitors to view specific criteria from multiple schools on the same page. This way, the comparison process is more visually intuitive as students filter schools that interest them.

Students can personalize their page. In addition, CampusExplorer.com recently added an option that shows the viewer’s chance of getting into specific four-year universities, based on grade-point average, SAT/ACT score, and extracurricular activities. The “chance of admission” calculator alone makes visiting this site well worth it.

Unigo.com and CampusExplorer.com are different kinds of sites, but both offer necessary information and experience for prospective college students.

Emily Torres contributes to Life’s a Bitch Books.