CollegeBoard.com, Part I

It's more challenging than ever to get into a good college these days. The good news (and the bad news) is that there's a wealth of information, advice, tools and services just a few clicks away on the Internet. The difficulty with the Internet is that there is sooo much stuff that it's hard to quickly find good, trusted information. Hopefully that's what this blog is all about... pointing you to the good -- and saving you from the bad and the ugly.

I thought I'd start my Internet research by looking at the handful of large, multi-purpose college admission sites. These are the one-stop shops that have information and tools that cut across the whole admissions process, from researching colleges through to financial aid.

One of the biggest and most polished is the College Board site. As you may know the College Board is the company that brings us the SAT (& other) standardized tests, so it's not surprising that this site is skewed toward information and services related to the SAT. But in my initial use of the site the SAT-related content doesn't get in the way of a bunch of other valuable features. As you can see from the title of this post (...Part 1) I'm only going to scratch it's surface today.

CollegeBoard.com has separate areas for students, parents and educators. Within each there are tabs for
- College Board Tests (listed first, of course)
- Plan for College (what to do while in High School)
- Find a College (powerful search features and a deep college data database)
- Apply to College (on line application tools)
- Pay for College (Scholarship search, loan info, aid calculators)

One cool feature is called 'My Organizer' (see part of this screen above). This is a personalized online space where you can keep everything related to your college admission activities. After a quick registration (I signed up in my son's name to get a feel for the student experience -- you can also sign up as a parent), I dove right in and picked 4 schools for my personalized College list. Little does my son know that he's interested in Duke, MIT, Princeton and Stanford ;-). This will be a great starting place for college research when the time comes.

Other things you can accomplish on CollegeBoard.com include:
- Register for the SAT
- Take a free SAT practice test
- Subscribe to the 'official' SAT online prep course
- Get and send your test scores to colleges
- Apply online
- Complete and submit the CSS/Financial aid profile

As promised I'll dig deeper into this site in the future. In the mean time I recommend you check it out if you're actively involved in the college admissions process.

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