Unigo Provides College Reviews by College Students

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 03/04/09

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Unigo, a recently launched Web site, provides a free student-generated guide to North American colleges for applicants and their families. Pre-launch, Unigo's team of 19 paid editors spent months researching America's top 250 colleges with input from 300 college representatives who enlisted students at their colleges to contribute content to the site.

After 30,000 candid and original reviews, videos, photos, and documents poured in, Unigo's editors viewed and organized the material. At some featured colleges, the company claims, close to 10 percent of the student body contributed content.

Resources on the site for prospective college applicants include:

• Original articles from students and recent grads on aspects of choosing a college, getting in, paying for it and college life;
• Editorial overviews of colleges, accompanied by current student reviews, photos, videos, and documents;
• The ability to search through reviews of every college by reviewer characteristics such class year, major, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, and sexual orientation; and
• All content can be rated, commented on, and flagged by other users.

Users can create social networks among others who share an interest in a particular school or have other traits in common.

Recently, forums were launched that enable high school students to communicate with one another and with current college students.

The company was founded by CEO Jordan Goldman, who previously created Students' Guide to Colleges, a series of student-written college guidebooks published by Penguin Books. The site is supported by advertising.