Petersons.com, the self‐proclaimed “education supersite”, serves a myriad people seeking information about private secondary and post‐secondary institutions. With nearly 14,000 links to Petersons.com from other Web sites, this site draws a wide audience. The Web site rides on the coat‐tails of the parent company, Peterson’s, that was acquired by the Thomson Corporation in 1995. As is the case with any successful commercial site,fee‐based services are offered: for example, Petersons.com provides opportunities for people to spend money on the Achieva College Prep Services, which offers prospective college students guidance through the admissions process. It also sells self‐study materials through its online store, with a 20 percent discount for online purchases. Despite the barrage of advertising from test preparation centers and other higher education institutions, if users focus on the material in the center of the pages, they will find that the site offers a tremendous number of useful resources and links for the eager one‐stop shopper who is hunting for facts about schools, colleges, universities, financial aid, camps, and jobs.
From the main page, users can choose from the following options: Explore Colleges and Universities; Pursue Graduate Programs; Distance Learning Courses and Programs; Career Education; Find a Summer Camp, Program, or Job; Investigate Study Abroad Programs; Select a Private School; Search Executive Education Programs; and English Language Programs. Each of these umbrellas covers a multitude of other topics, some of which are not self‐explanatory. For example, unless users happen to click on the heading Investigate study abroad programs, they would not know that information useful to international students resides there. Despite this anomaly, Petersons.com is easy to navigate, and most links take individuals to information that proves useful to them.
Under Explore Colleges and Universities, for instance, users can link to lists of competitive colleges, nursing programs, culinary schools, or career education options. In other words, these lists encompass all of the basic information that individuals would need to know about cost of tuition, number of students, and percentage of full‐time faculty with terminal degrees. Articles on preparing for college are available from this page, as are links to financial aid information. Another service to which users can link, CollegeQuest, is a program that readies students for the college plunge and allows them to apply online to more than 1,200 colleges. This free service does require registration, and the process is relatively painless, but in order to return to Petersons.com from CollegeQuest, users must hit “Back” numerous times. In some cases, it might be easier to apply directly to the colleges and universities, which provide online applications through their own Web sites. There are links from each of the descriptions that Petersons.com provides to the colleges’ official Web sites, making the connection smooth. If students have general questions about social life at college, they can “Get advice from Harlan” ‐ a service that caters to the traditional age college student.
Pursue Graduate Programs has a similar layout to Explore colleges and universities, yet more specifics, for individuals may choose by educational area from among a list of ten, including MBA programs, law schools and medical schools. The preparation section provides links to various graduate‐level entrance examinations, including practice tests for the GRE® and GMAT® tests.
Whether selecting a private school, looking for a degree without an on‐campus requirement, trying to find the perfect summer camp for a son or daughter, tracking down the ideal job (even at Peterson’s), dreaming of a semester abroad program in Spain, brushing up on English, or getting started in an executive education program, it does not cost a thing to browse through any of the pages, and the breadth and depth of the coverage is marvelous.
Kudos to Petersons.com for pulling together so much information in one location and in a fashion that is easily navigable, and for allowing people to fill their carts with the vast majority of this information for free. This site, although geared toward students and their parents, fills an important niche for librarians and for career counselors as a ready reference source.
