| My undergrad school was a top-notch engineering and science school, but their website was a catastrophe. It was often much easier to just go to google and use a site:school.edu type of search (For those that aren't aware, you can type "site:website <search terms>" in order to restrict search results to a single domain. For example, "site:collegeconfidential.com racinreaver" would return only search results from CC with my name in them.) than use the school's own search engine.
I found the use of the website to not really that big of a factor, unless it was totally broken. Once I started attending the school, I learned the three or four address that lead to everything else (in my case: hub, myandrew, webmail, and blackboard), at which point the terrible website front page didn't matter.
And, for the record, the rest of the technology taken care of by my school was fantastic. Nearly 100% wireless coverage in the dorms, academic buildings, and in most public places, blazing fast internet, tons of webspace to save files (no need to keep track of USB thumb drives), and computer clusters in practically every building. |