I think this should be an ad-on to something that already exists, because why would people inscripe to this site.
What I mean the critical mass, where do you get your first users.
Tommy

Maybe a facebook plug in? i think facebook can be reasonably sure who-has-gone-where (due to their university based origins)... so long as voting details are private might be a good starting point.

How many students are checking out the different schools each year?

Getting users to add content could be tricky. The average user would most likely never register, not that you need to them to register to feed money of them....

Would go nicely to a school directory.

Making the site should not be a trciky/costly part, but marketing it. Getting content, and interest from the schools would be the hard part in my opinion.

There's actually something that students talk about their professors and rate them and say stuff like "Do not enroll in this professor's class." If they do this, and if urge about this idea by randipants05 then they will talk about all the other stuff that was suggested. This is a great idea. Have this idea more well known and it will catch on like wildfire.

Professor review sites like
http://www.ratemypro...essors.com/index.jsp
seem to get a lot of traffic and content. Extending this to cover the entire university environment would seem to be a great idea. I'd be surprised if it doesn't exist, but even if it does, you can do better.

would the focus be to share reviews of the school/college overall (academics and social life) or just be a social life portal that includes reviews of local things? The latter might be better off as part of another service but the former might get more traffic as high school student and parents look into schools.

another thing to consider is that your readers would probably spend a short time on the site until they found a school they liked so it doesn't seem to be a long-term relationship.

This is a great idea. It is a lot of work putting the site together. Not to mention, you would need to get other students to vote and contribute to the ratings. I don't know how to solve the problem.

I think people will review their college without any incentives.

There are tons of sites to rate professors, why not colleges? People will either love their college or hate it, but either way they will want to spread the word.

I think that this might have some potential, but (as mentioned above) there would definitely need to be some strong tie-ins to existing social networking sites to drive traffic and leverage what's already out there. Stand-alone college ranking sites (not just socially, but in all aspects) have been done, so its going to be tough to get much attention otherwise.

For example:
http://www.studentsreview.com/

With a cursory glance I don't see a specific section devoted to social life and the area surrounding the schools on this site, but the information is there if you dig enough.

I agree with several other posters, you should connect with existing review sites. I really like the idea a one stop site for all your college comparison information.

You should probably break down the possible topics into categories, such as party life, grub, off-campus activities. I wouldn't want to wade through the party life entries, but food and off-campus activities would be of interest to me.

Unless it could pick up onto a huge part of the college population you risk only getting information from those stuck at home with nothing better to do then bash the school on the website while others are out having fun, not using the site and such.

Thanks for the comments. the

* they are all really good

Could be an addon to facebook, a portal for each college with pictures/events updated by students

I agree making this an application on facebook, or tied to the US News and world report rankings will make it much better. Facebook---kids who got to the schools right the review, kids in HS---read the reviews

I feel like facebook and Myspace has become too overcrowded. I looked at my friends facebooks today and they all had so many applications added on that they have become meaningless. they are like spam and I look right past them. Kids do Google searches for say (Liberal Arts College-Maine) all the time. When a search like that pops up it would be nice if there was an exclusive review site.

i think it is great, we need to create a new facebook site

Sorry. this IDEA seem such a leisurely driven than a real need . Real college students should be exhausted by academic excellence's choice than the worldly things around the campus...

but am not saying this wont find a niche...the crowd already know how this would be perfectly fit into other portal as additional feature or possible link.

Enjoy the entertaiment search anyway!

i also agree this should be an add on

I think this would be a very interesting look at a true perspective of what colleges are like.

Sounds like a similar idea to rateMyProfessors.com. There are a lot of people willing to contribute because they know that someone out there will value what they have to say just as that person valued what someone else had to say on the site.

To find the important factors regarding why one is choosing a university, why wouldn't go to the school's official ".edu" site. To tie in entertainment/leisure many school blogs cover this.

But those blogs are not covered at one place... you literally have to scour the internet to find unbiased opinions

Nice idea, but get ready to be sued by those colleges that don't like their perceived image. Not so much a problem if Party U goes after you, their lawyers smoke too much pot. But step on the toes of some of the bigger boys and you might have their high profile law professors coming after you. (Who also probably smoke just a little bit less....)

I don't see the issue with kids who want to let other kids know that the school food is great, but lacks variety so it gets boring after about 3 months. And even "the real college students" as someone put need to know there is anything fun to do in town to relax, or if there are some stores around to help with projects maybe...like craft stores. I am just saying that a university is obviously only going to show you the good things about the school....But you are living there for anywhere from 1-4 years....and you don't JUST do school the whole time.