Student-written Web site launches to review colleges

Penn hopefuls in high school have yet another college guide at their fingertips - literally.

A new college-reviewing Web site called Unigo launched last Wednesday with more than 30,000 reviews of 250 colleges and universities across the country.

The site, which is free and completely student-written, garnered 150,000 registered viewers and 1.5 million unique page hits in its first week, said site founder Jordan Goldman.

"I wanted to tap into something for college students to create and share reviews and videos and also to give an authentic window to high school students and parents that's not all shiny and PR hype," he said.

Goldman's involvement with the admissions process began early. The 26-year-old New York City native was featured in a New York Times article on the topic as a high-school senior and later appeared in the Times bestseller The Gatekeepers.

But it wasn't until he was a freshman at Wesleyan University that he realized there was no 100-percent student-written books on colleges.

So Goldman wrote one - his Student's Guide to Colleges has grown to become an admissions-process bible. Six years later, he had another epiphany.

"These guides have three to five pages per college, no photos, no videos," said Goldman. "I wanted to take the old concept into a new Web 2.0 generation."

So he Googled "business plan," added his own ideas, e-mailed 500 Wesleyan alumni for advice and met with 50.

Today, the company has a Park Avenue address and a board that includes executives from Tivo and JetBlue and a former Harvard admissions officer.

A search for Penn yields about 70 reviews, photos and videos ranging from a walking tour of Huntsman Hall to a guide to the best food trucks.

But not only can potential students search by college; they can also search for reviews from a particular group of students.

"It's quite a different experience at Penn if you come from New York than if you come from Ohio, or if you're right-leaning versus left leaning, or if you're gay or African-American," Goldman said.

He considers the user-generated and constantly-revised information Unigo's biggest advantage over traditional guides like the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings.

"There's an honest, less censored and more diverse perspective here," said College sophomore Mark Pan, a reviewer for Penn.

Unigo employs 20 recent graduates as full-time editors in addition to two unpaid interns at each school it reviews. The site generates most of its revenue through advertisements.

Goldman hopes the site might also become a way for current students to voice concerns.

"Right now, if you have a problem with your administration, you can protest in front of the library, but there's no impetus for the administration to change," said Goldman.

As it is still early in its public stage, the Web site can be slow or unresponsive at times. But Goldman is confident of Unigo's expansion plans, hoping to include every college in the nation within the next six months.

"This puts power back into the hands of students," he said.

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