In the old days, the Yale Daily News Insider guide to colleges had a niche on “authentic reviews” of colleges by the people who use them, their students. Sure Fiske and Princeton Review included a couple of quotes but it always left one deeply dissatisfied. College confidential gave rise to discussions about colleges by semi infomred high schoolers, but again it lacked teh credibility of those who live it daily. College Prowler came on like a vengence giving kids a much more intimate experience. Now the power of the crowd comes to a free website: unigo. The idea is simple: Students submit reviews of their universities. It allows user to make comments, upload photos, videos, and documents.Let us look under the hood.

America’s most famous university, Harvard not only graces the front page, but has

• 89 review
• 101 photos
• 27 videos
• 12 documents

Unigo provides a summary, which frankly tells us little different from standard profiles:

Unigo

With
an endowment as large as some countries’ GDPs, an academic legacy that
reaches into the upper levels of American government and business, and
an acceptance rate that’ll make your jaw drop, it’s no surprise that
Harvard University is at the top of ambitious college wish-lists.
Harvard
College, where undergrads make their home, is just outside of Boston in
Cambridge, and like other top-tier Ivies, boasts castle-like neo-Gothic
architecture and ivy-covered walls. Undergraduates say courses are
rigorous but diverse, and core curriculum requirements force students
to dabble beyond their areas of expertise. While the top-notch
professors are often too focused on research or grad students to give
undergrads much quality time, students report they learn just as much
from their best-and-brightest classmates. Social life revolves around
13 residential houses, where students sign in with friends after
freshman year and spend the next three years eating, sleeping, and
partying. Most students are by nature ambitious, but they still find
time to get their party on at Cambridge’s college bars, dorm parties,
or one of Harvard’s secret “finals clubs.” While pre-professional
students can be competitive and curves tough, it seems the hardest part
about Harvard is just getting in.

The unigo review, on the other hand, provides a much more satisifying experience complete with hyperlinked articles:

“The H-Bomb effect:“
While non-students claim they’d kill for the chance to brag about
attending Harvard, actual students know their school’s brand-name
appeal can be both a blessing and a socially-awkward curse of
heightened expectations. Despite what you may have heard about the
brilliant student body, massive endowment raining money down on
Cambridge, or world-class resources, “Harvard doesn’t have the shiny golden aura that most people perceive it to have,” explains one sophomore. “Sure, there are tons of opportunities—but no one hands them easily to students.”
Harvard’s students worked hard to get where they are, and college isn’t
just a four-year party—most elect to throw themselves into their
studies and activities with the same intensity they did in high school.
Being around their fellow best-and-brightest is a humbling experience (“Harvard
can have the tendency to make everyone feel insufficient… next to
students who are saving baby seals and starting AIDS research programs
in Africa”), and “constant competition“
over everything from grades to housing is challenging even for the
toughest students. Whether students love or hate their Harvard
experience, almost everyone is thrilled to become a part of the “richness and tradition” associated with Harvard’s powerhouse name.



While Harvard regularly makes top-10 national college lists, students
aren’t always happy with what’s going on inside the classroom. “Even
when you realize that Harvard is a medium-sized school where large
classes and little face-time with professors are inevitable, it’s hard
to square off the expectation of what a Harvard education should be
with what it actually is,” observes one sophomore. “Most lectures are too big,“
explains a freshman, especially in large departments like Economics or
Sociology, where hundreds enroll in the largest classes each semester. “But the seminars and labs are great,”
with smaller sizes, individual attention, and appealing topics. Having
top-notch professors at the forefront of their fields means lectures
and reading lists are stellar, but “professors generally don’t know your name unless you frequent their office hours constantly.”
And busy schedules mean most student-instructor interaction happens
with the teaching fellow (TF) assigned to small groups within large
lectures. Some students feel the TFs are overused as teachers and
caution that TF quality can make or break a semester.



Harvard’s notoriety for grade inflation isn’t totally deserved, say students. “It’s true that if you study hard, you probably won’t get a C or D,” according to one sophomore in the economics department. “But…Harvard students are people who are used to working hard and getting A’s.” Perhaps the best thing about the academics at Harvard isn’t the actual academics. Harvard’s “wealth provides endless opportunities…for internships, research, anything you can imagine,”
writes one sophomore, who had materials for her painting class fully
subsidized. And while some overly-ambitious types take pleasure in
busting curves, “people also work well together,” frequently collaborating in study groups, says a senior.



With a name entrenched over three centuries, there are a plethora of stereotypes about the typical Harvard students. “Rich,
white, WASP-y, and old money; elitist, entitled, and snobbish;
collar-popping and arrogant; smarter-than-thou with 4.0s and perfect
SATs (but no social graces),” one sophomore lists. “No wonder I’ve rarely received positive responses when telling strangers I attend Harvard.” But the reality is much different: “Harvard
these days is much more diverse and egalitarian…We have international
students, athletes, people from rural Kansas, and classmates with no
apparent academic merit whatsoever. There is no ‘average Harvard
student.’”



Because it receives so many applications for so few spots, Harvard has
the luxury of handpicking a group of diverse students from a variety of
backgrounds, with a range of achievements and points-of-view. “I’ve never met a more diverse group of people,” says a sophomore from Maryland. “I’ve
met people who are from countries I had never even heard of, belong to
religious groups I didn’t know existed, and have the most obscure
hobbies (e.g. champion bird watchers, world-champion DJ, New York Times crossword puzzle developer).”
Recent financial-aid initiatives have added financial diversity to that
list as Harvard adds more ways for lower- and middle-income families to
pay what they can afford. For all their differences, only one
group-wide stereotype that seems to stick: “Everyone here is pretty smart,” says a freshman. “Even the athletes I’ve met are for the most part very clever.”



Harvard’s social life centers on 13 residential houses that students
sign into after freshman year, which students love for creating a “strong sense of community” in smaller campus subsets. They sign in as “blocks” of up to seven friends. However, the “blocking” process can be “infamous,” according to one sophomore. “Every
year, tears are shed, blame is leveled, and relationships ruined as
friends unfortunately discover their friends don’t want to live with
them.” But since Harvard doesn’t have a student center or make “an effort to provide any unified social experiences,”
houses have significant social implications, as they form members’
social base, provide places to eat and relax, and host parties
throughout the year.



As for socializing, students vary wildly in what they consider to be a good time. For at least one senior bio major, “social life happens in the library,” although, according to others, even Harvard students have to go somewhere when the library closes. “Humanities students, who have an easier life academically, just transfer that intensity to extracurriculars,”
explains a junior. Most devote a large portion of their free time to a
full slate of sports, performing and visual arts groups,
pre-professional societies, volunteer opportunities,and other clubs. “It’s more that doing extracurriculars (and occasional schoolwork) is what they enjoy, [not] that they don’t have fun,” says one junior.



That’s not to say students can’t find a party when they want one. “People party every weekend and during the week as well, depending on how much work they have,” says a junior, and nearby Boston is “packed with things to do.”
Cambridge offers a full array of shops, restaurants, and pubs within
walking distance. There are a handful of house-less sororities and
fraternities, but the more exclusive party scene happens at Harvard’s
finals clubs, “still functioning dining clubs now more interested in drinking, girls, and interesting combinations of the two,”
which are shrouded in secrecy, plagued by accusations of
discrimination, and said to be expensive old-boys networks. Dating
among the Harvard community was summed up bluntly as “crap,” with no middle ground between cozy long-term couples and drunken hook-ups.



But, despite the myriad experiences students report within Harvard’s
ivory tower, the best part isn’t always the four years, but the
opportunities that a Harvard degree affords afterwards. “Dropping the ‘H-bomb’ can be both a satisfying and an awkward experience,” says one sophomore, “but it is really comforting to know that it will be that much easier to get a job when I graduate.” For that, they learn how to accept both the good and the bad: “Harvard is quite simply Harvard,” explains a freshman, “old, bureaucratic, elitist, diverse, one big mix of everything.”

These hypertext links to actual student reviews.

Unigo will:
Most Comprehensive and Authentic College Resource Debuts September 17th - MarketWatch

Unigo will offer the following resources to prospective college and university applicants free of charge:

— Original articles from students and recent grads on every aspect of
college admissions and college life;
— An Intelligent Calendar to guide students through the search/application
process;
— “Unigo Match” to help students find the colleges that are
right for them, and current students at those colleges with whom they
can interact;
— Editorial overviews, accompanied by tens of thousands of current student
reviews, photos, videos and documents;
— Ability to search through reviews of every college by each
reviewer’s gender, ethnicity, major, political leaning, hometown
and more, so you can see every college from a variety of perspectives
— All content can be rated, commented on and flagged by other users to
ensure truthfulness and accuracy.

With over 250 colleges with reviews, there is a lot of data to sort through. This has HUGe potential. In fact, as I started writing this Ben of the Philippines shot me an email asking if I had seen it. Given that the site has been open for three days…this is impressive.