College has it Right!

The beginning of senior year is mainly looking at the colleges that interest you. Since everything is based on the internet now-a-days the first thing you usually do while looking for a college is by looking at the websites. While going through all the different websites you find the “good” and “bad” ones. When I was preparing for college there was one website that helped me out a lot. College Board had everything that I needed right when I needed it. On the website it had a section for students, parents, and professionals. Since I am a student I only could access the student section. Once you sign into “For Students” there is sections for College Board Tests, Plan for College, Find a College, Apply to College, and Pay for College. When you click on “College Board Tests” it has information about the SAT & Subject Tests, PSAT/NMSQT, AP, and CLEP. There is a section called “Tools” which has everything you need to know and have to take the College Board tests. You can learn, register, practice/prepare, scores, and contact each of them. I like this because there are several tools to help you be successful in the College Board tests. When you click on “Plan for College” all different type of links come up to help you start planning for college. There is everything from starting points all the way up to college success. After you are done planning for college you click on “Find a College” and it has a tool that is called, “College Match Maker” which I personally think is the best and most helpful thing on the website. What you do is answer all the questions such as, what size school, where, what type of area you want, and what majors you are looking at. After doing that a bunch of colleges that match you will come up, from there you can look at the school, what they require, and how much it is. Then, after you find schools you should click on “Apply to College”. The major problem that the most seniors have is writing their college essay. Most students don’t know what to write about, how long to write it, or what the college is even looking for in the essay, so College Board has a whole section on everything you need to know about the college essays. Also, they talk about the applications, when to send them in and what you need to send into the college with the applications. Once you apply to college you need to know how to pay for it, so that is when you should click on “Pay for College”. This tells you everything you need to know about paying for college. There is a section for scholarships and financial aid, a section on all the different ways to pay for college, and even a section with a net price calculator. I think that College Board is a great tool for High School juniors and seniors to learn everything they need to know about college.

When I look at good websites I don’t see a bunch of different colors and words on the home page. When I look at Evolution and Natural Science I see boxes all different colors each with a lot of words in them. The home page is wicked long, which I think you should only have to scroll down a little bit, but have links to other pages that say everything that it says in the boxes. Every box has different types of font, which I believe it should be only one or two different fonts. If I was someone looking for information about evolution and natural science and I clicked on this page, I would click the back button right away because this website is way too busy, with all the different colors, fonts, and is very confusing. There are a few links, when you click on them it is even more confusing and difficult. The background color is very ugly too. I also found a couple of spelling errors, which isn’t good. Overall, I believe that this website is not a good website at all.