Visit College Campuses From Home

These five sites can help a student during the college search process.

May 31, 2011 RSS Feed Print

Comment (5)
Tweet

Before a high school student makes any definitive college decisions, experts recommend they visit campuses first. Stepping foot on the physical campus can help prospective students gauge the makeup of the student body, the environment, academic opportunities, and many other factors. Now, thanks to the growth of social media and technology, students can learn a lot of this information without leaving the comforts of their own homes. Here are five online resources that reveal more about what college life is really like.

1. eCampusTours: Stepping foot on a campus may be the best way to get a true feel for a college, but eCampusTours gives the student the next best option from the convenience of the couch. The site provides 360-degree virtual tours of college campuses and surrounding areas for the user to explore—at no cost. At this time, there are more than 1,300 virtual tours available on the site.

2. YourCampus360: Much like the previous site, YourCampus360 allows students to explore a campus using 360-degree functionality. While this site fails to provide as many college tour options, it does offer more social opportunities, such as providing prospective students with insights and images through blogs and photo galleries posted by current and former students.

[Get tips and advice about making an effective college tour.]

3. College Prowler: Save the graduation rate and questions about course offerings for the college website. College Prowler provides answers to the questions many prospective students want to know, such as the quality of the dining hall food, whether a school has a good night life, and many other non-academic interests. Access the school of your choosing and find myriad topics rated on a grading scale, based on the input of students who have attended the college.

4. YouTube EDU: The world's leader in user-generated videos offers prospective students the opportunity to view videos created at universities nationwide. Users have the chance to watch student interviews, discussions with professors, and may even find some classroom lectures.

5. Rate My Professors: Once enrolled, students will be spending a lot of time in the classroom, but it is difficult to gauge an entire faculty based on a single college visit. Rate My Professors fills that void. The site offers ratings on thousands of professors across the country, grading them based on helpfulness, clarity, ease, and overall quality. Be sure to reserve some judgments as many students may not give the friendliest of ratings or may be influenced by the marks they received in the class, but the site can be helpful when used more broadly.

[Learn why high school students should get a head start on college visits.]

For those looking for even more in-depth information and analysis, the U.S. News Best Colleges section offers exclusive rankings and research on 1,400 schools to help students find the perfect fit.

While online resources like the ones featured above can help a prospective college student learn more about a university, ideally, they should only be used as complements, not replacements, for physical campus visits.

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

Tags:: students,; colleges,; college admissions

Reader Comments Read all comments (5)

Add Your Thoughts Comment Name State Email

Please enter the two words below into the text field underneath the image.

Your comment will be posted immediately, unless it is spam or contains profanity. For more information, please see our Comments FAQ.

[p - Just accomplish abiding that you appropriately acquit the accouterment afore your adolescent wears it - just http://www.newlebronshoescheap.com/nike-lebron-james-8-shoes-blue-white.html - lebron shoes 2012 in case! Another way that you can buy blue babyish clothes for your adolescent is by arcade online . The comfort level can also be maintained with the help with the standard rubber cupsole . com and get http://www.newlebronshoescheap.com/nike-lebron-10-low.html - lebron 10 shoes on with the program . This has meant she has had to start at 6am three mornings a week . http://www.newlebronshoescheap.com/nike-lebron-james-9-shoes-p-s-elite-white-gold.html - new lebron james shoes Is . One of the drawbacks of article directories is that there are so many of them that you can literally spend the majority of your time submitting to http://www.newlebronshoescheap.com - new lebron shoes these directories lebron shoes for sale . There was a teachable moment for young black kids in this brouhaha but I believe the Urban League missed it.[/p - [p - http://www.newlebronshoescheap.com/nike-lebron-9-low.html - lebron shoes 9 low 00 . Download this image from 脗漏 http://www.newlebronshoescheap.com/nike-lebron-james-ambassador-5-shoes-black-orange.html - new lebron shoes Dreamstime . They might prepare a series of lessons or informative emails which are sent out regularly to each new subscriber from the time the subscriber first puts their name and email address down and requests information . To Sum Up the Gliss For Bones: Any gliss is possible in http://www.newlebronshoescheap.com/nike-lebron-8.html - lebron 8 shoes the above examples within each note set . Search gt Shop Nike Air Max 2011 Running Shoes Nike Air Max shoes are more than your average line of http://www.newlebronshoescheap.com/nike-lebron-james-8-shoes-black-purple.html - lebron shoes for sale shoes . The ad features LeBron asking a simple question to a difficult answer: "What should I do?" It also features a monstrous amount of jabs at his critics, ranging from his detractors in high school to the Round Mound of Rebound himself, Charles Barkley.[/p -

Robcbj37 of TX 6:59AM April 25, 2013

eCampusTours has been producing free virtual tours for college campuses since 2000, long before many schools had access to virtual tour technology. Our tours are especially beneficial to schools that do not have access to the lucrative budgets required to hire for-profit tour companies. To date, we have worked with nearly 1400 schools, many of which have had multiple updated sessions, all at no charge to the school or to the students using the site. Every tour published on eCampusTours has been done so with the permission and coordination of a campus representative, and we have never taken photos of a school without being accompanied by an institutional staff member. Thank you to US News for recommending eCampusTours as a resource for prospective college students and their families.

eCampusTours of TN 2:58PM June 10, 2011

I have now taken some of these tours, which are very helpful for students who are not based in the U.S. The YourCampus360 tours seem to be like a real tour where you are walking from place to place. Very cool!

Clarissa Nobbe 3:42PM June 03, 2011