Move over Princeton Review; there's a new college information Web site on the block. Unigo.com, a student-generated college Web site, allows students from 267 schools across the country to post reviews, pictures and videos and provides the information for free.
Unigo.com was founded by Jordan Goldman, a Wesleyan University graduate, and went online in September, the New York Times Magazine reported on Sept. 19. Brown's Unigo page as of Tuesday night includes 82 student reviews, 44 videos and numerous photos that offer a slice of campus life.
Two on-campus interns, Wesley Royce '08 and Elif Ince '08, provided much of the initial content for Brown's page. Royce said that she heard about the position in an e-mail sent to her Creative Nonfiction class. As an intern, she wrote a review, encouraged other students to submit reviews and took many of the pictures that are now featured on Brown's Unigo page.
Royce said that along with the student reviews, the multimedia content on Unigo.com "gives students who don't have a chance to visit (Brown's campus) an opportunity to see what they're getting into."
Royce and Ince contributed startup reviews and multimedia content, but since then dozens of voluntarily written reviews have added to the information about Brown available on the site.
One of the reviews featured is by Natasha Go '10. Go sent in her review last March in response to an e-mail asking for volunteer reviewers from a site called bystudents.com, Unigo's startup name. When the site was launched in September, what she saw surprised her.
"I didn't really know about Unigo until I got the e-mail that my review was on it," she said.
Go said she likes the way that the reviews on Unigo.com are formatted.
"I think one of the interesting features is that they ask you some of the stereotypes about your school," and whether or not they are true, she said. "Sometimes you're able to debunk them, and sometimes they're accurate."
In her Unigo.com review, Go wrote that Brown students are not all "tree-hugging, pot-smoking, Birkenstock-wearing hippie liberals who take all their classes S/NC and frolic all day." While acknowledging students are "generally more laid back" at Brown than at many other schools, she added, " we do work very hard. And there are way more hipsters than hippies here."
But Go added that no single review can describe Brown in its entirety.
"The college experience is made up of all these different pieces, so having different reviews colored by different perspectives gives a more complete view," she said, adding she thought the University's Unigo page gave a "pretty good description" of campus life.
Go said Unigo.com is "great for the Facebook generation." But she had one significant complaint about the site.
"I'm upset that they put my last name on the site," she said. "I feel like it makes me very searchable now, and that everything I said about Brown is out there forever." Go said that she e-mailed Unigo.com and asked them to remove her last name, but it is still online.
Vice President of Campus Life and Student Services Margaret Klawunn said that the Unigo.com facilitated "students speaking to students" about the college experience. "There are a lot of things that have to go into the (college) decision," Klawunn said. "The insider perspective is an interesting and important part of that."
Royce agreed that the site filled a helpful niche: "I think it's a great idea, and I kind of wish I had had it when applying to colleges," she said.
