National College Admission Week?

I’m writing from Seattle where-amidst a flurry of news about the economy and the presidential campaigns-thousands of counselors, college and university admission officers, members of the news media, vendors and consultants, and assorted others (I noted name badge holders in more than six colors) have gathered in NACAC’s annual meeting. I’m off to a discussion of the role of standardized tests in admissions shortly.

But what a week!

It started off with a New York Times piece in which reporter Jonathan Dee swooned over Unigo, a new website launched by an energetic and talented Wesleyan graduate who seems to be quite both visionary and persuasive, if you believe what Dee writes. Unigo is a site devoted to enabling college and university students to share their insights about their institutions. The site has already collected more than 30,000 contributions—text, images, videos. Unfortunately, it also had pretty significant technical issues early in the week, though it appears to be more stable now. One reason that I paid attention to this site is that Sam Jackson is one of its advisers. A smart choice by Unigo….

Fast forward to NACAC. There’s always a lot going on here, of course, and many different kinds of announcements come out of this meeting.

One that we at mStoner feel particularly close to is the public debut of CollegeSpeak, a site that we have helped to design in partnership with Lloyd Thacker and Lisa Reynolds at The Education Conservancy. Several dozen counselors, admission officers, members of the media, and others sat in on Lloyd’s demo of our beta at a meeting yesterday. Reports of the meeting appeared this morning in the Chronicle of Higher Education [note: login required!] and Inside Higher Ed.

Here’s a brief description of CollegeSpeak from Scott Jaschik’s piece:

An early version was presented for the first time in public Thursday at the annual meeting of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. It is a much more individualized, education focused approach, with less reliance on pure statistics, and the focus is on the fit between student and college, not the superiority of one college over another. The concept drew considerable praise from high school counselors and college admissions officers. Many said it was essential that some sort of service like this be created. 

And this morning, Michael Beseda from St. Mary’s College of California mentioned to me that Monster.com made an announcement yesterday about its own foray into college admission. Check out the newest entry at Admissions.com. Whatever you do, don’t mistake Monster.com’s site for Admission.com; not quite the same thing.

If you’re interested in knowing the short version, you can check out Monster.com’s press release about the site here. And the site is live, offering rankings and social networking tools as well as some expert feedback. Despite Monster.com’s deep pockets, why am I skeptical about this?

Here’s what a Monster.com spokesdude says:

As the college admissions process becomes increasingly competitive, and the cost of tuition continues to climb, its more important than ever that students and their parents have resources to help them hone into the schools that best align with the students interest and needs, noted Mark Stoever, executive vice president of Internet Advertising and Fees for Monster. With the introduction of Admissions.com we are able to offer unbiased, comprehensive assistance to prospective students as they research their options and formulate their applications. And, with Monster companion sites FastWeb.com and FinAid.org, we are able to help students with the admissions process and the financial planning component as well.

Right. Just who prospective students need to hear from: another advertiser.