Exploring College Websites

Exploring college websites is one of those tasks that high school students often put off—and I get it. It’s like standing on the edge of a diving board, staring at the water below, knowing you’ll have to jump eventually but feeling just fine staying in the theoretical realm for a bit longer. Clicking through a college's website makes everything feel more real: the photos of smiling students, the busy dining halls, the list of majors that seems both exciting and overwhelming. It can be intimidating, almost like the future is staring back at you, waiting for you to make the first move.

And yet, visiting a college’s website means a lot to the colleges themselves. They notice when a student takes the time to explore—it’s a signal of genuine interest. But so many students procrastinate. Why is that? Maybe it’s because they "read" those pictures as the truth—as if the website is showing them the absolute reality of the college, instead of just the story the college wants to tell. It can be hard not to feel like you have to fit into those pictures. Or maybe, it's just the whole weight of it: the idea that one day, soon, you might be in those photos, or scenes like that.

Sometimes, when I work with students, we explore these websites together. I’ll ask them to share their screen over Zoom and talk me through what they see, what they notice. It’s fascinating—like watching someone map out their gut reactions in real time. One student, a soccer fan, loved that a college had a photo of what seemed like a spontaneous soccer game—guys and girls playing together, everyone in casual clothes, clearly just having fun. Another student, who wasn’t fond of a local college he’d visited because "the students seemed weird," felt more at ease with a school he only visited online simply because the website photos made the students seem like people he could identify with. It’s small details like these that make students feel, consciously or not, whether or not they might belong at a school.

Other times, when we need to quickly visit a college website and learn specific information, I share my screen and "drive." In those situations, I combine what I already know about the student with what we need to learn about the college to help us decide how to navigate our online visit. If I know a student loves creative writing, I’ll head straight for the English department page, look up the curriculum for the specific major that seems to fit them best, and help them discover classes or professors that pique the student's interest. If a student is interested in mechanical engineering, we’ll skip over the general campus tour page and maker spaces, taking note of things like the specific equipment available, how accessible the space is, and if there are usage quantity limits. I want to help each student look beyond factors such as college rankings and acceptance rates and identify the factors most important to them and the schools that will be the best fit.

The truth is, while a website can never provide a complete picture of a college, they do hold clues. And the more you look, the more those clues start to tell a story—one that might just feel like your story. Or at least, the beginning of it.