Hello everyone!
I know it can be tough to find helpful resources for school-related stuff; trust me, I have spent many hours Googling various things about everything from online AP classes to summer programs. Whether you’re a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior, these websites will be able to benefit you!
- CollegeVine – Lots of great articles, especially since you can sort by different factors of relevance such as your grade.
- PrepScholar – Good articles, tend to give basic information but there’s some more helpful ones
- IvyWise – Similar to PrepScholar and CollegeVine
- College Confidential – Definitely approach this website with caution; the overachievers on this website are insane. However, it’s a good resource for compiled lists of summer programs, internships, etc. The people on here know their stuff… for the most part.
- Quora – I find that people post some interesting personal stories on here. It’s good if you have a specific question and just want to throw it out there.
- Reddit – Good if you’re looking for peer advice, not so much experts or facts, but you may find opinions on extracurriculars or study tips for AP classes that you wouldn’t in a standard article.
- Niche – College search tool, pretty standard.
- Raise.me – This is a great way to earn scholarships (you put in your grades, extracurriculars, etc. and colleges can give you micro-scholarships for each accomplishment), but I’m also including it here because it has a cool college search tool. It’s pretty similar to Naviance’s, but it also includes filtering with certain scholarships.
- Naviance – I’ve mentioned Naviance before, and I’ll mention it again. You can search through colleges, take personality tests to reveal good majors/jobs for you, you can create a resumé, and much more. I love looking at the scatterplots of college acceptances/rejections since it’s using data from actual alumni of your high school.
- Your school’s counseling/college and career center website – There will usually be some informational guides here, and possibly a list of work and volunteer opportunities. If your school keeps it updated, this is a very valuable resource since it’s the most local opportunities accessible to you.
- YouTube – You can watch vlogs/videos from anything to touring colleges you’re interested in or study tips for a specific AP class. If you find the right college/school-oriented YouTuber for you, it’s a valuable resource.
*A lot of the college advice websites are actually college consulting services, so make sure you look at their blogs/articles and not the counseling/test prep stuff (unless that’s what you’re looking for!)
I know there’s so much information out there that it can be daunting to start sweeping the Internet, but these are a few of the websites I’ve found useful. They’re not very original, but you can find most of the things you’ll need to know on here. Good luck in your research!
-Brooke
adventures of a typical high school student 