Thursday, October 1, 2009

Judging College Websites

Ew. Since the dawn of the internet, universities have tried to woo prospective students with official (or anti-official) looking websites. Come: let's judge books by their covers!

The New School:



Are you a college? A sidewalk? Are you Bansky? Do you exist? Where do you hold classes? Out on the streets? What do you learn about? Hot dogs and garbage?

"I love being able to bounce ideas off my classmates," says a pensive Marie Clare Brush, BFA candidate in fashion design. Is that like a head shot? Are you a model?

So, you're on Youtube. And twitter! (sample tweet: 'Tell Us Why You Chose The New School - Enter on our Facebook Page to Win a New iPod Nano!') But you also have a flickr page, like some struggling music photographer.

Is this a myspace profile? Can I date you? You're kinda hot. I'm confused.

The George Washington University:



Scrolling flashy web-updates, messages from Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, information on Swine Flu....what is this, the Huffington Post?

Why are you holding paint brushes, Michelle Obama and various children? Do you want to remodel my bedroom? And what does George Washington have to do with all this? Was he particularly good at remodeling bedrooms? Are you his slaves?

What is a foggy bottom? Is that like farting? What's refreshing about it?

Questions! All I have is questions for you, GW! And yet, you remain mysteriously silent. I think I'm going to have to go to CNN and tell them you couldn't be reached for comment.

New York University:



You're an arch in a garden. Are you a monument? A park?

Are there rules for sitting in your park? You seem to have lots of rules.

And where are all the human beings? Everyone's face has been blurred out, except for the man at the very bottom of the screen. Do you like human beings? Or are you more of a monuments kind of place?


Vassar:




Are you a forest? Is there a laboratory in your forest? Do you make hella bombs? Are you a nuclear facility? Am I in Hanford? You're quite a pretty nuclear facility. Do trees make things easier? Is bicycling like reading a book?

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to read you or print you out and tack you on to the wall. Maybe that's the point? Maybe you're a dream?


Brigham Young University:




I think you're trying to be "urban" and "edgy." You have buildings. You have old people and skeletons and soccer. They don't "connect." You are a collection of disparate topics, loosely related and thrown on to a website. You are governmental, bureaucratic, set in stone. Your font is internet 1.0. You're a beta vision of school websites. I want to penetrate your cold exterior, but you're totally weirding me out with all of your mixed signals.

Oxford:




You are an index, a library, a catalog of ideas. You're the kind of museum where everything is in storage. You don't care about the internet. You care so little about the internet that you use pixelated stock photos of wiry people to advertise something as important as a flu vaccine (why are colleges convinced everyone visiting their websites has the flu?) You don't need to advertise yourself, and you want to make it clear that you don't need to advertise yourself, which is kind of like advertising yourself as someone who doesn't care about advertising yourself. Analyzing your homepage just now made me 3% smarter, which was probably you're sneaky goal to begin with.

Oberlin:



You are Facebook, you are Flickr, you are casually dressed, you have children, you have fun, you're a cool mom, you don't care too much about status, you don't try to pose in photos, you don't even change what you're doing when there's a photographer around, you stand in rivers, you like America, you learn through play, you like babies...you're basically a forty-year-old high school Literary Arts teacher who tries to train her students to be cultural relativists. You make me feel excited and also a little bit nervous and unprepared and misanthropic.

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