Exploring schools with your student is stressful for the parent and the student. I choose to make it into a road trip to help save money and time and give us some exploration. It certainly added more stress to travel from town to town, from hotel to hotel. The flip side of that, it gave my daughter and I time to connect more and build on communication between the two of us. During the trip, the one thing we realized that we overlooked during our research before the trip, was all the tiny details of life on these campuses.

Back home and settled, we started to explore other websites to get more information on the little things like campus safety, campus habits and digging into the community handicaps. First she was curious of the LGBT+ footprint and dings that can be found online. The one site that was a huge help, was Campus Pride. The site has been around for at 15 years and even publishes a yearly list of schools who are making strides on their campus towards the community and beyond. Searching for the school name and CAMPUS PRIDE (CP) on a search engine will hopefully come up with a link for the school archive on CP. They do release a Best College’s list every year. If the school has no presence on the site, run screaming. If you think the LGBT+ community is not important, well you can just skip this option, and well skip reading anything further on the site! (UPDATE: I wrote this post in 2024 and at the time Campus Pride was still running. In 2023, the board of directors fired one of the executives over issues of missing funds. Sadly in 2026, the site is now defunct. Hopefully the site will return, as it’s not just a search engine for casinos.)

The second site is niche.com which offers two ways to really dig into student feedback and campus details. From actual student ratings and reviews, to polling about campus life and enrollment. The rating system has a pretty broad topic range. Everything from Academics, Athletics and even Safety & the Party Scene. Yes, I know that’s not a big topic of interest for parents. Trust me, you want to see that grade, especially if it’s pretty low, right! The site also has a tool that will take your GPA and SAT/ACT scores, to tell you the odds of getting into the school. The student section has great details on the feedback received from students. At the end of the school info page, you find a student review section.

Finally, and this is for the parent who is super protective. The college Common Data Set report that is released each year has a section that provides the number reports on things like on-campus and on-campus housing reports on such infractions as drug use, drinking, weapons, rape, stalking, domestic & dating violence. Trust me there are some very popular schools that are little less appealing when you see these numbers. Granted those numbers can be sku’d when you talking about small town schools versus schools in major cities or metro areas. It’s all relative, but you can take what information you want from it and use it as you wish.

I know, it’s a lot of numbers, letters and feedback. Just remember, show your student the info, and let them decide what is important for them. As a parent, all we can do is be aware of challenges that lay ahead for your future freshman.

TheCollege Road Trip: Research 3 (Niche & Campus Pride)

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