College Visit Reports - Suggestions

Roger_Dooley · 08-04-2006, 07:22 PM

Got a way to make our College Visit Reports better or more useful? Post here.

JasonM · 08-04-2006, 10:58 PM

I just typed up a report of my trip to Vassar College, but almost all my text in the individual sections was cut off. The only section that wasn't cut was "Visit Description." I imagine you did this on purpose--keeping all the "comment" boxes to a certain length--but it's very hard to give an accurate depiction of the school in such little space. I'm debating copying and pasting all that and organizing it in the "Visit Description" box, and then just putting a tiny blurb about it in the actual comment box (if this isn't going to be changed, that is, I'd rather not just exit out and have all that typing be for nothing x_x.) Would it be alright if I did that?

EDIT: Actually, after I previewed it, all my extra text was deleted

That was sort of a bummer. Oh well!

Roger_Dooley · 08-05-2006, 08:44 AM

We know we need some kind of "end of space" indicator for the short answers. We expect that most text will go in the description box. Or, should the short answers be longer?

natmicstef · 08-06-2006, 01:36 PM

We visited 4 universities in Canada but only Mcgill is listed...think it would be good if a poster could add a university not on the list. In our case these are Bishop's, Concordia and the University of Ottawa.

dstark · 08-06-2006, 01:47 PM

Why are only 6 schools listed? Expand the list.

Roger_Dooley · 08-06-2006, 01:58 PM

>>6 schools

There are 400+ schools listed, just click any of the "browse reports" or, if you want to add a new report, the Add Report link will take you to an alphabetic menu.

>>Bishop's, Concordia and the University of Ottawa

As far as reports for schools not on the list - right now, it's not really set up for members to start a new school. Maybe we can do a "not listed" category that could then be moved when a school is set up. We'll do a little brainstorming on this. In the meantime, we are setting them up when suggested by members. We'll do those three.

dstark · 08-06-2006, 02:00 PM

Roger, I know there is a list of hundreds of schools, but when I click on the link, http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/crep/www/ I get 6 schools. Then I have to futz around to see the others. It's time consuming.

dstark · 08-06-2006, 02:05 PM

Also, on the individual college message boards, provide a link to the college visit reports for each school. Then, if I want to go to the message board for NYU, for example, I can easily click on the NYU visit reports.

Roger_Dooley · 08-06-2006, 04:43 PM

We'll do that, dstark, once we're out of Beta on this. Right now, we're getting enough usage to see what needs to be fixed or improved.

natmicstef · 08-08-2006, 08:40 PM

Firstly; although I was already logged in, when I went to type this post, I was asked to log in again.

Next! When clicking on the letter of the alphabet to select a university, and the subsequent list of all the universities under C for example comes up, I think it would be helpful that if by the side of each university's name there could be a number depicting how many reports have been made on that university. Right now you have to click on each name to go to the next layer, only to find out there is no report on it.

Roger_Dooley · 08-08-2006, 09:16 PM

Good suggestion - we've already been working on indicating the number of reports. Not sure about the multiple login thing.

debryc · 08-11-2006, 03:02 AM

Is there a link to the college reports from the forum sites? It would be helpful if, for example, after stumbling upon Rensselaer which I've never heard of before, I can easily click on the link to look up RPI in college visits.

Roger_Dooley · 08-11-2006, 05:45 PM

We'll do that as soon as we think the Visit area is "ready for prime time".

taxguy · 08-12-2006, 12:36 PM

Roger, Besides adding academic rating for each department visitit, I would raise the word bar and allow more than 10,000 bits. Raising it to 20,000 would be better. Frankly, if someone has that much to say about the school, I would like to read it.

Also, if you are a CMU alum then you are aware that each school within CMU varies in both quality and reputation. It is thus essential to allow use to rate each department visited for its academic quality and facilites. Please think of adding this to the review.

Roger_Dooley · 08-12-2006, 01:34 PM

Interesting ideas, TG. Do any of your reports run over 10K characters (that's about 2000 words)? We hadn't noticed any that approached that length, but I agree that if someone has that much to say it's probably worth hearing.