The official e-newsletter of The Equestrian College Advisor.

A re-blog:

I’m gearing up for my annual January trip to the College Preparatory Invitational Horse Show this week; I’ll fly out Wednesday so I can squeeze in a campus tour in the Florida sunshine before the show starts on Friday and everything is all set for the journey – my flights and hotels are booked, my rental car secured, and I’ve been in contact with the campus visit coordinator at the campus I’ll see to make sure they’re able to accommodate me.

In short: I’m as committed as I possibly can be, not only to the trip, but the campus visit itself (which is an important and vital part of the work I do to help my students in the college search). And by committed, I mean that I plan to fully immerse myself in the visit, soaking up as much information about the school and its culture as I can. After all, if they’re willing to make the  time to provide me with insights into who they are so I can share it with my students, I owe it to both client families and the school to be fully present. Read More

A local college has ponied up nearly $2 million to go from tenant to owner of the farm that houses its equestrian program.

Randolph-Macon College last week purchased the 100-acre Coventry Farm at 12214 Ashcake Road in Ashland. Read More

A comprehensive selection process, which began in November, concluded on Friday when UC Davis Athletics announced the addition of women’s beach volleyball and women’s equestrian as its new varsity sports. By adding these two programs, UC Davis will now sponsor 16 women’s intercollegiate athletics teams.

This is the latest example of the University’s history of leadership in women’s athletics and its commitment to Title IX compliance.

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It’s crunch time for high school seniors poised to pick the college or university they’ll be heading off to later this year. Acceptance letters have been received, and now the ball is in their court: It is time to commit to a school. The deadline is May 1, which means things just got real for many students and their families.

Ultimately, it’s an informed gamble whether a dream college will turn out to be the stuff of nightmares. And given that the national average for students who don’t return to the same college after their freshman year is about 33 percent, there apparently is a lot of that going around. Here are some things that should be considered before hitting that “I accept” button at any school.Read More

Navigating College Web SitesYou know the information you’re looking for; you know it’s located on the college’s web site – but the question is, where?!Colleges and universities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on their web site maintenance because they know it’s the first place you will go when you have questions or seek specific information about their campus and programming. The problem is that no two campuses have web sites that are alike – which means if you know where to find the information on one site, you’ll still have to hunt for the same data on another one.How can you speed up the process?

• Know where to start. Most colleges break their web sites into categories – “current students,” “alumni,” “prospective students.” Yet for the most part, the prospective student section is entirely designed for three purposes: to get your application, to schedule your campus visit, and to direct you to other parts of the site. Thus, unless you want to apply or visit, you’re better off skipping that section and going directly to the section that best fits your question. This begins with…

• Understand your needs. Do you need information about the major you’re interested in? Head directly to the academics section – or better yet, go directly to the online course catalog. Conducting research on campus clubs? Check out the heading “Student Life” or “Campus Life.” Want to know about your housing options? Look for terms like “residential life” or “housing” – which are also typically found in the “Student/Campus Life” section.

• Follow breadcrumbs. Sometimes surfing a school’s web site can turn into a trip down the rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland – you see one intriguing link, click it, find another, and then you don’t know how to get back where you began. Colleges know this happens – and most of them embed breadcrumbs into their web pages (look for a line of text with arrows up by the page header) that can return you to the beginning with just one click.

• Save bookmarks. If you’re in the thick of comparing the school of business at one of your prospective colleges and the school of business at another, save yourself a lot of time down the road by bookmarking both pages, signing up for the mailing lists of both programs, and even making bookmark folders for updates from both in your web browser.

The purpose of a college or university web site is to provide information to visitors in the most straightforward fashion possible. That said, some schools have more flash than substance in their sites so you’ll need to be savvy to obtain the information you seek. Good luck!

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