College Confidential Relaunch

Hi there,

You probably noticed things look a little different around here. Don’t worry: We’re still the same College Confidential you come to for advice on finding, getting into, and making the most of school. But over the last year, we’ve dedicated ourselves to improving our platform and growing our mission to include not just getting you into school—but getting you beyond it, to real-world success. So, after years of telling students to do their homework, we did ours. We sought feedback from users, checked gaps in our content, and looked at how we could evolve to meet the needs of the 21st century student.

As a result, we’re excited to reveal a fresh new look and feel that will make information easier to find and tools easier to use. But our changes aren’t just skin-deep. We also expanded our expert content offerings, added new functionalities to our school search tool, and are working on adding a career focus to better support you on the path to your aspirations. Here’s a breakdown of everything that’s new and improved on College Confidential:

STREAMLINED LOOK AND STRUCTURE TO BETTER FIND WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR

Sleeker appearance

When we asked the community what improvements they’d like to see, the consensus was clear: people wanted to see information better organized and a more user-friendly, modern appearance. So we’ve done away with clunky fonts and excessive widgets and revamped the College Confidential brand with a new logo, clean design, and rebuilt technology to simplify browsing.

Simplified navigation

Content is now separated into three simple categories: Forums (where you can post or search the forums), Schools (where you can search for best fit schools), and Articles (where you’ll find expert advice). With this consolidated menu, you’ll experience a more intuitive flow through the site that makes getting the information you need—and stumbling on information you didn’t know you needed!—much easier.

MORE EXPERT ADVICE TO COMPLEMENT FORUM ADVICE AND ROUND OUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Forums stay the same

Millions of users already share their candid advice and experiences in College Confidential’s forums, creating an incredible trove of valued information. These forums will stay the same for now, but in the future we’ll add better search functionality and account features to improve the overall experience of the forums.

“Read & Learn” changed to “Articles”

We’re excited to complement the candid insights of our forum community with a new section of expert advice from our team of editors and advisors, called “Articles.” Users previously found expert content under “Read & Learn,” but we’ve restructured the information under “Articles” to broaden and better organize the content created by our team. Explore the expansion of expert advice with content categories like “Test Prep” and “Admissions,” and get insider information from the pros.

Expanding our subject matter expert team

Our expert content is growing, and so is our team of subject matter experts who are working to broaden the range of topics we cover and add increased dimension to the College Confidential experience to ensure that all users—whether they’re considering community college, a four-year school, graduate program, or anything in between—can find content that fits their needs. Generating timely, topical content around a range of college and career subjects, this team will bring clarity to complex questions to help you make the most informed decisions for your future.
Save school searches and get more personalized results

Don’t just search—save

You spend a lot of time searching for schools, so we know how important it is to be able to save your results and revisit them. Our school search tool now offers the ability to save the schools you come across and curate lists of your favorites. Save individual schools, or save your search filters and label them to group your results into categories, such as “dream schools,” “safety schools,” and more.

More filters=more relevant results

School search is all about finding the best schools for you, so we’ve added additional filters to our search tool that allow you to get more get specific about your wants and needs. From campus activities to diversity and school services, our new filters help you zero in on schools that tick more of your boxes.

We have an important vision for the future and mission of College Confidential, and these changes are a step in getting us there. We’ll always be a go-to resource for school planning, but as education and student needs evolve, we want to help you find more relevance in your learning by connecting it career possibilities. To meet this need, we’ll be building more robust school pages, adding more expert content, and incorporating career exploration resources from Roadtrip Nation, a nonprofit career exploration organization dedicated to helping people define their own roads in life. To learn more about College Confidential and Roadtrip Nation, visit our “About” page. As always, we’ll continue to listen to users to ensure we’re offering the best experience to get you to your goals!