Believe it or not, spending time on Facebook can be a good thing for parents involved in the college search and admission process. In fact, Facebook can be an efficient way of collecting information from a variety of sources to help figure out what you need to know about finding and paying for college. And I’m not talking about simply following colleges that might eventually make the final college list.
What you need to understand that is the Facebook pages make it easy for the administrators to share posts from outside of Facebook. Now, in a lot of cases this simply means that a company sets up a Facebook page to share information from its own website. Useful for the company but doesn’t do much to help people looking for general information about the topic rather than a specific brand.
In terms of college search, liking the page for a specific college on Facebook may provide you with some information on financial aid and testing deadlines that is useful regardless of which college you apply to. But it’s likely to be limited and lost in all of the other information that shows up on your timeline.
However, there are pages that share more than just information from their own websites. They include information from other sources because they believe that it’s something their followers would find interesting or useful. So for those that don’t want to subscribe to another newsletter or visit multiple websites, these pages are a great resource.
I’m going to list seven Facebook pages on college admissions that I think are worth following. I had two major criteria for including them on the list. The first is that they needed to share information from websites other than their own. The list does have one exception to the rule for what I consider a good reason.
The second criteria is that the page needs to post frequently. The main reason for this requirement is that only a limited number of a page’s posts ever make it to an individual’s timeline. I’ve seen some estimates as low as 20%. This means that if you actually want to see anything from the page, they have to post frequently.
Of course, individuals can control this when they initially like the page on Facebook. Users can change the default so that they see items from the page first in their newsfeed or receive all notifications. Depending on the page, you might try changing the defaults to decide if you like the type and amount of information you’re receiving.
Best 7 Facebook Pages on College Admissions
USA Today College
This doesn’t just focus on college admissions but also for those in college. Most of the posts are from USA Today but they do include some from other websites. Also, they have organizations like Her Campus and Varsity Tutors providing content on their website so it will show up in the timeline. This is a generalist option–don’t expect laser focused topics on college admissions.
University Parent
University Parent has a smaller following than College Parents of America but they post more frequently and do a decent job of sharing from other sources. While the focus in on students already in college, a lot of information is directed to parents of high school students beyond just what happens after they pick a college.
Grown and Flown
This is the Facebook page for the Grown and Flown website that looks at parenting from middle school through college. Their excellent website tends to have a personal focus which follows it onto Facebook. They share plenty of information from other websites including ScaryMommy.com. Their page is a good place to find some emotional validation along with useful information.
DIY College Rankings
Yup, I’m including my own Facebook page. I post information I pull from Google alerts related to the college search process and paying for college. I know I’m not the only source of college information out there and Facebook makes it easy for me to share what I find whenever I can.
Inside Higher Ed
This Facebook page is only linking to posts on the Inside Higher Ed website. However, this is not a bad thing. Most parents probably aren’t interested in most of what Inside Higher Ed actually covers. But the stuff they decide to post on their Facebook page tends to be of interest to broader audiences than just those that work in high education. Furthermore, when you click on the link, you aren’t going to encounter premium content which is often the case with the Chronicle of Higher Education Facebook page.
NCSA Athletic Recruiting
NCSA Athletic Recruiting services provides plenty of useful information on athletic recruiting on their Facebook page. They also do a very good job of sharing posts from other websites on athletic and academic information. This is not simply a platform to advertise their services. If you are interested in playing your sport at the college level, you should follow their page.
Varsity Tutors
Anyone focusing on testing should consider liking this page. You’ll see a lot of posts on studying, not just for tests, and related topics. Initially, it seems like they are sharing from a lot of other websites but mostly it’s from their own articles that appear on those websites. This isn’t necessarily bad since they do provide a lot of information. But it also means that you are quite likely to see their information show up by following other pages.
