<p>New to this! My daughter has been accepted to 5 schools and we are waiting on a few more. What is the best way using CC to find out the good, bad, and ugly about the schools? Any advice on how to best navigate this site would be helpful!<br>
thanks!</p>
<p>In my view, there is nothing better than visiting the schools in question. Talk to students and faculty, check out the facilities, grab a copy of the student newspaper.</p>
<p>This site has some good discussion boards, but many schools have little or no commentary. There are some good books and web sites, like the ones Princeton Revew puts out. One new one that I recently discovered is students review .com (hope these sites are not filtered out), that has commentary as well, but like anything, you have to take it with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>It would have been best if you had found us a couple of years ago! ;)</p>
<p>I’d go to the individual college forums and the CampusVibe forum to see what people say about the schools. If you have a specific question about a school, you can post it in the college forums or on the parent forum (as opposed to the cafe, where you are now).</p>
<p>If you share the schools on the parents forum, I’m sure you’ll get lots of responses; people here know a lot about a lot of places. Good luck!</p>
<p>If you want info on specific schools, ask in the parents’ forum.</p>
<p>If you can’t visit the schools, go to their web site, and read the students’ publications.</p>
<p>Some schools have forums for admitted students to ask questions.</p>
<p>Many schools will have Facebook groups.</p>
<p>You can also search if the school in question has a LiveJournal community.</p>
<p>Start a thread in the Parents forum (not the Cafe) titled “Info wanted on x,x,x,x,x,” listing the schools.</p>
<p>. . . and now I’d have to say keep poking around. I’ve spent way too much time on CC the last 3-4 years but knew nothing about the Campus Vibe section. (Is it fairly new? Anybody familiar with it? I just spent a few minutes on it and can’t really tell if it’s more regular individuals posting stuff or colleges advertising themselves.)</p>
<p>(And P.S. While it’s true there’s a ton of valuable info on the Parents Forum, I always spend a few minutes on the Cafe afterwards. CC-ers talk about the most amazing <non-college-related> things!)</non-college-related></p>
<p>inger, CampusVibe replaced campus visits. Scroll down on that page and it’ll look familiar. I think most of those photos/videos are ads, paid or not.</p>
<p>Ahhhhh. . . I was going to mention that in all my time here I’d never really looked at the college visits section. Makes sense (and I do think a lot of it is self-promotion by the schools).</p>
<p>Initially, spend more time on the “top forums” listed on the left of your current screen - especially fin aid, parents, colleges. When you feel you have mastered those, venture up the column under “discussion menu” to “discussion home” - you can then scroll down and finds lots of sub-topics.</p>
<p>Welcome! Better late than never!</p>