I just got introduced to Unigo, a resource for University planning, and thought I’d at least drop a quick note about it. It’s essentially a guide to Colleges & Universities, ala the US News or Princeton Review yearly College Rankings. Except, it’s free, and built by volunteers.

You can check out the Cornell University page, which I’ve taken a snapshot of:

The service is essentially a competitor to Wikipedia (Cornell); we’ll see how it fares over time. Right now Wikipedia has better concrete information, but Unigo wins on the social side, with ratings, videos, and photos.

A recent NY Times article, The Tell-All Campus Tour, explains more about the service:

Said Adam Freelander, a Unigo managing editor: “Even the best guidebooks kind of make it seem like every college in the country is an awesome place to be, no matter who you are. And that’s not true.”

“For so long, the colleges have been able to have this stranglehold on the P.R. image of their school,” Goldman said recently in his office, decorated boy-workaholic-style with nothing but an open box of Frosted Flakes and a toy robotic dinosaur. “It’s just harder to look at them as the main source of information. If you’re a college student, you are as much of an expert on being a student at that college as anyone.”

I’m adding a link to my sidebar for this site, and hope it continues to develop and grow.