An Internet Road Map for the College-Bound Student (continued)

Kenneth E. Hartman, author of Internet Guide for College-Bound Students, writes that you can find two types of information about colleges, official and unofficial. Official information is what you can learn from the admission office, guidebooks and the college catalog. Unofficial information is the kind you read in the student newspaper, find out from contacting current students and browsing student-made Web pages. And college Web sites are the easiest way to gather unofficial information, short of visiting the college in person.

To make the most of a college's Web site, try these strategies.

• Look at the home pages of individual faculty members in majors that interest you—some post detailed syllabuses of their classes, descriptions of their research interests, and email addresses. If you have a specific question or two about a major, try sending a faculty member a short, polite email introducing yourself and asking your questions (don't ask anything you can find out in the college catalog, though).

• Read the pages for prospective students thoroughly. They will give you basic information about the college, as well as some sense of the mission and priorities of the college.

• Visit the home pages of student organizations—you can check out the schedule for the Drama Club or see what resolutions were passed by the Student Senate.

• Look for the home pages put up by current students at the college. If students list their email addresses, send short email messages to a few of them, asking questions about their college experiences. But don't take a few complaints on one student's home page as gospel; try to look at a good sampling of student pages.

• Find the alumni association pages—what are alumni of the college doing now? What is the college doing for its alumni?

Applying to Colleges: Avoid the Bumps in the Road

The option of applying to colleges online is very common. A few colleges even require online applications (but the vast majority of colleges do not). Computer-minded students will probably feel that applying online is easier and even more enjoyable than the traditional application. (Check out the Web-enabled Common Application, which is accepted by many colleges across the country.)

Whether or not you apply online has no bearing on the college's admission decision. Admission officers are committed to assessing each application on its content, not how it was received.

Two problems can creep up when students apply online, but you can avoid them. First, students who use email and other interactive Internet options for casual correspondence may have a tendency to write their online applications in their usual email language. But online applications should be just as literate and error-free as their traditional counterparts. That means no Internet abbreviations or emoticons, and a well-proofread essay. This advice seems obvious, but some admission officers have noticed that the quality of some online applications has been questionable.