Tuesday, September 25, 2012

College Websites

They Suck.  They are black holes of Dante-style death designed to suck you in and never let you escape with any sort of meaningful information.  Don't even get me started on college brochures and pamphlets (which you should throw away immediately and never read.  If something comes in an envelope, check to make sure they aren't offering you money and then bin it too).

Here's the trick to college sites: only the prospective students parts are comprised of propaganda, subliminal messages, and satanic rituals.  So don't use those parts.  The generic college website will have a row of links at the top of the page that will be something along the lines of "prospective students", "admitted students", "current students", "parents", "alumni", and "give us money".  Always click the current students link first.  There will be a long side-bar of links to things like undergrad programs, degree requirements, faculty contacts, campus event schedules, sporting events, visiting art galleries, concerts, maps, church events, lectures, Dr. Horrible sightings, and sometimes even pdfs with titles like "The Freshman Experience", or "Coming Soon!!!!!".  These are your gold mines.

It should be relatively easy to find out things about campus life, class schedules, faculty, majors, programs, sports, theatre, music, art, money, food, etc.  If you can't find something specific, then you can try looking under the prospective students heading but beware that most of the stuff there could easily be compared to Fox News in terms of reliability.

Don't be afraid to email the admissions counselors and things like that - if you ask intelligent questions, they might think that you are actually intelligent and not just too lazy to find the answers on your own.

The counselors should totally just hire me to teach Junior Days because I would be so much more fun and you might actually learn things and get things done.  :)  Too bad I'm never ever going to spend extended amounts of time in that building ever again...

Happy hunting!

2 comments:

  1. Gracias! I spent all weekend trying to gather info, to no avail really, because my brain melted in 2 seconds...

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