College Search Often Begins at Home Page

Rachel Fleiner first learned about the University of Washington in Seattle from friends. But the Taft High School senior got her formal introduction over the Internet.

Chaminade high school senior Chris Lebedeff also went online for his college search, shipping his academic interests and school preferences to an Internet Web site. The next day he received a list of scholarship sources.

“I’ve sent out 22 letters and so far I’ve gotten 17 back with information and some possibilities,” he said. “If I had to use books I’d still be looking.”

The days when students would spend hours poring over college catalogs, writing for information and waiting weeks for responses are quickly passing. Today, school information, applications--even campus visits--are just a mouse click away.

Fleiner, 17, said the Washington campus offered a catalog, but it wasn’t much to go on. “From the Internet, information was laid out in an easy, comprehensive way and all I had to do was click to the area I wanted,” she said. “I was able to see the latest pictures of the campus and get admissions statistics immediately.”

More than ever, high school students are taking advantage of the Internet revolution, visiting university home pages for instant introductions to institutions and their admissions offices. Answers now come in minutes rather than weeks. Instead of wrestling with a typewriter and a bottle of white-out, many high school seniors are downloading college applications to their personal computers.

The University of California and the California State University systems introduced online applications in a pilot program last month. Officials hope that by next year all students will be able to fill out an eight-page application and in minutes return it to the admissions office over telephone lines.

The California schools are joining colleges around the nation in creating splashy home pages to provide prospective students immediate access to information and admissions.

“One of the really important things that happened on campuses is that university admissions people became aware of what the [World Wide] Web is and what it can do, and figured out ways that they could exploit it,” said Michael Stoner, vice president of College Connections, a New York-based public relations and marketing firm.

The new outreach efforts also help students who cannot afford the expense of visiting campuses far from home. For many, electronic images and information are the next best thing to being there.

Pomona College is creating a virtual tour that will allow visitors to “walk” through parts of campus via computer. Pomona sophomore Jacques Nadeau thought of the idea last year as a way to offer a more literal view of the campus to Web browsers.

“I have a lot of friends who just don’t have the money to visit colleges,” said Nadeau, who comes from Oregon and did not see the campus until after he was accepted.

Colleges are hoping to draw the attention of students who stumble across their Web sites while surfing the Net. This is especially true of more obscure institutions.

“Students who may have overlooked us before are finding out about us through database searches and on the Internet, so we’re attracting students we may not have reached otherwise,” said Mark Anderson, admissions director at Gustavus Adolphus College, a 2,400-student liberal arts college in Minnesota.

About a dozen Gustavus freshmen, including Lauren Fry of Wisconsin, discovered the college that way, Anderson said.

“I was able to get specific information about professors and departments on the Internet,” Fry said. “I didn’t base my decision on that because it’s definitely better to visit the school, but it was helpful.”

Aside from basic information on admissions requirements, such as minimum SAT scores, many home pages also include financial aid information, ethnic breakdowns and the profiles of professors.

“Once I got on the Internet, I learned that the big school environment isn’t for me and it took me two days of searching the Web sites of all the UC and Cal State campuses to figure that out,” said El Camino High School senior David Sommers, who did most of his college research on the Internet.

The El Camino High guidance office has a computer for students to search the Internet, and to scan college information stored on CD-ROMs.

Nearby Taft High School was one of a handful of campuses selected to test the UC and Cal State University online application systems. Students filled waiting lists to use the single campus computer linked to the Internet to finish applications by the Nov. 30 deadline.

Students at Chaminade high in West Hills were lucky enough to have several school computers linked to the Internet.

Not all high school seniors are as fortunate. Many are without access to computers. For them, selecting a college still requires some legwork, typewriters, pens and paper.

“Getting connected to the information superhighway is still pretty far off for many students, and until Internet I don’t see this skyrocketing for universities,” said Mary Ellen Parker of the National Assn. of Secondary School Principals.

College home pages began appearing about three years ago. At the time, they were designed for the relatively small number of computer users who ventured into the esoteric world of cyberspace. Since then, university home pages have evolved into sophisticated marketing and recruiting tools, using specialized graphics intended to appeal to growing numbers of young Internet users.

UCLA, for instance, recently hired Box Top Interactive, a Westwood Web site designer specializing in corporate accounts, to monitor its home page.

“Institutions are starting to wrestle with how they deal with the Web and how they make it work for them,” said Stoner, the marketing specialist.

Stoner said a good college home page should be interesting, have easy access to admissions information and not too many videos that slow down modem connections.

Home pages have an advantage over traditional college catalogs because they are easier to update and can include a wider range of subjects.

Some college officials even predict that online information and applications will supplant college catalogs within five years.

“Eventually, I think that Web pages will largely replace those kinds of printed materials,” said Nina Ellerman, administrative Web manager at Pomona. “We’re aimed at a market of people who thrive on being on the Internet.”

Many educators argue, however, that electronics will not completely replace the human touch.

“I think that as great as these high-tech tools are and as enthusiastic as I am about them, there still is a very important role for people in admissions offices, talking to students and interacting with students,” Stoner said. “The computer is a tool to facilitate that kind of communication but it can’t replace it.”