An Overview of StudentAdvisor from Editor-in-Chief Dean Tsouvalas

By Megan Weyrauch on November 22, 2013

Searching for your ideal college, scholarships, MOOCs, or general college advice?

StudentAdvisor, a Washington Post Company, offers free college help and resources to students of all ages.

“We try to be a free resource for students who are trying to find the right college or the right scholarship or the right MOOCH in a trusted environment,” said Dean Tsouvalas, StudentAdvisor editor-in-chief.

The company is heading into its fourth year and launched two new services this year—Scholarship Advisor and MOOC Advisor.

Tsouvalas taught high school English and journalism and worked for four years on the television show “20/20” in New York before getting the opportunity to help launch StudentAdvisor.

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Trust

Because StudentAdvisor is part of the Washington Post Company, there is a trust around the brand, said Tsouvalas.

“Also, because we do not filter anything, it gives people a real feel for that school or for that course, and I think those things are key,” he said.

While many similar sites ask for money or want registrants to fill out long forms of information, all of the StudentAdvisor services are free.

Resources

StudentAdvisor offers free access to trusted conversations, college reviews, college comparison and match tools, planning guides, a social network of verified advisors and more.

College match/comparison

StudentAdvisor obtains some of its statistical college information from the Department of Education database, said Tsouvalas.

“We [also] take in whatever public information we have about schools and then allow people to do two things: college match and college compare,” he said.

StudentAdvisor offers a database of over 7,000 colleges, universities, trade schools and online degree programs in the United States. Students can search for their perfect school by filling in their area of study, ideal campus setting and annual tuition and fees range.

“You can match to the right college, but one of the things I like more than anything is being able to compare them side-by-side,” Tsouvalas said.

StudentAdvisor allows students to compare up to five colleges side-by-side by tuition, acceptance rate, student-to-faculty ratio and more. Here is a sample of a comparison of five different colleges.

Photo from Student Advisor

Read/write a college review

Read reviews of the colleges you are interested in or write reviews of your own school. Each review is based on a 5-star scale with space to write about the “good” and “bad” aspects of your college.

“If anybody wants to write a review about their school, that’s super helpful and easy, and it’s a great way for other people to learn about their school,” Tsouvalas said.

To read a review, simply type in the name of the school you are interested in—nothing else is required.

To write a review, you need to set up a free account by creating a user name and providing an email and password. No other information is asked of you.

Scholarship Advisor

The further we get into college, the less we tend to search and apply for scholarships.

“We all forget that you can apply for scholarships when you are a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior in college, so you can always apply” Tsouvalas said. “What I think is really important is the whole idea about finding money throughout college.”

The Scholarship Advisor tool allows students to search for internships in a wide variety of topics. The service is free and offers a trustworthy, extensive database.

A member from the StudentAdvisor team looks at the scholarships to determine if they are legitimate, whether or not the URL’s work, and more, Tsouvalas said, to ensure the database stays accurate and honest.

“We have tried to [examine] most of the scholarships that are on the site,” he said.

In addition, Scholarship Advisor creates lists of scholarships devoted to certain topics including anything from academic and high-reward scholarships to weird and wacky scholarships.

Instead of looking at the scholarship lists, students can search for and bookmark scholarships from the database and keep track of their search history. Searching through scholarships by state is also an option.

MOOC Advisor

MOOCs are massive, open online courses with unrestricted enrollment that are generally free and taught by college professors.

MOOCs take a variety of forms but are most popularly a combination of video, lecture notes, assignments and projects.

StudentAdvisor offers a service that allows students to search for MOOCs.

“MOOC Advisor is the new, sort of the latest movement in open online courses,” Tsouvalas said. “It is a great way to sample a class from a professor from around the country and some of the best professors in the world.”

Because there are so many MOOCs offered, it is hard to know which one to take. MOOC Advisor allows students to read about different MOOCs from students who have taken them.

“I love that you can write a review or read a review about a MOOC to find out if it’s the right course for you,” Tsouvalas said.

MOOCs provide avenues for change and experimentation for students that may want to switch majors. Students can try out courses in a field they think they are interested in to discover whether or not they want to pursue that path.

“It is a great and painless way because [students] are free to sample the course,” Tsouvalas said. “They are real courses and in some of them you can even get college credit.”

Schools such as Harvard, MIT and Yale offer MOOCs, Tsouvalas said.  The experience is one that students should take advantage of.

“It’s not putting a video camera in the back of a lecture hall–that’s not what this is,” Tsouvalas said. “These are interesting, integrated and there are tens of thousands of students in these classes—you get to meet students from around the world.”

MOOC Advisor is like yelp.com, described Tsouvalas.

“A great way to describe MOOC Advisor is Yelp for college courses,” he said. “It’s all about college classes and college courses.”

College Guides

In addition to the reviewing and searching services, StudentAdvisor offers free online digital magazine guides.

“We have all kinds of guides for students … that range in topics from filling out FAFSA to how to survive freshman year,” Tsouvalas said.

Top 100 Social Media Colleges

StudentAdvisor also publishes The Top 100 Social Media Colleges, a scientifically calculated list published annually that highlights the colleges best using social media. The 2013 list came out in October.

Take advantage of StudentAdvisor’s safe, free services and databases.

“You have to be careful of what information you put out there,” Tsouvalas said. “We are part of that trusted brand and environment.”

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