So, it's no surprise that a guide to finding colleges and universities on the Web had to surface at some point, and now it's finally here. What's more : the writer gave WPI's Web a perfect rating - five out of five.
The book is called NetCollege 1997 written by Michael Wolff and published by Wolff New Media, the creators of the best-selling NetBooks and Your Personal Net, an adaptive website (www.ypn.com). It contains general information for prospective students on how to do their college search on the Web. It also summarizes each US college's website in a page, giving each a rating on a scale of one to five.
The book lists all the colleges and universities which received the perfect score, and it's clear that WPI is in good company. Not only does the elite list contain our engineering rivals MIT and RPI, but also some of the big guns, including Duke, Harvard, Princeton, College of William and Mary, and Johns Hopkins university. In all, 36 schools received the perfect "Wired rating," which was based on "the quality of a school's entire web site: its accessibility, design, and ease of use." "Generally," Wolff writes, "the schools with the most facilities and hardware receive the best representation on the Web."
Wolff cited WPI's computer to student ratio as being 3 to 1, numbers only a handful of schools could beat. Page 395 is entirely dedicated to WPI, including the URLs and email addresses for Admissions and Financial Aid. In "The Usual Tour," Wolff lists the URLs of WPI's Virtual Tour, student clubs, sports, academic departments, Greek life, the Library, and our publications.
The "Skip the Brochure" section is a handful of interesting, off-the-beaten track pages that separate the college from the rest of the pack. For WPI, Wolff lists the Lens and Lights Club, citing their technical expertise, the Autocross Club (which has since lost its account), and the WPI Social Committee.
Many schools are now offering requests for applications online, but WPI is one of a handful with the entire application available for filing out on the Web. The online application is a key feature for prospective students, who can have portions of the application saved in a database for them until they return to finish off the application. This is a very important feature, as many don't have all the information on hand when they begin filling out the application.
According Director of Admissions Robert Voss, 114 of the 141 applications for next year's freshman class received so far have been submitted through the Web. Why so many? Simple - the Admissions Office waives the application fee for those who apply online - a big incentive for prospectives to use the technology available to save them (and their parents) the $50 fee.
As far as comparing ourselves to our partners in the Worcester Consortium, none of the other Worcester colleges and universities earned the perfect rating. The highest rating after WPI was three, received by Clark University (www.clarku.edu), followed by Assumption College (www.assumption.edu) and The College of the Holy Cross (www.holycross.edu), each receiving two. Tufts University (www.tufts.edu) also received a rating of two, while Becker (www.becker.edu) and Quinsigamond Community (www.qcc.mass.edu) were among those colleges not listed in the book.