Ask HN: Review my side project - UniversityReport
I've been working on it in my spare time for the last few months and it would be good to get some feedback before I unleash it on real users: http://www.universityreport.co.uk
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I think that the more information people have while making decisions the better, so I love the idea. However, I could not find an about page on the site and I have a few questions.
1) Why one would want to use your site instead of other sources that are already available? For example, US News and World Report (http://www.usnews.com/sections/education/worlds-best-universities/index.html) or Princeton Review in the states (http://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings.aspx) have a lot of information about universities.
2) Where do you collect your data from and why should one trust it?
- Are students interviewed or polled somehow?
- Do the Universities cooperate and provide access to their databases or provide the data in some other form?
- Is there a method for students to provide feedback directly and if so how can you verify their enrollment at the university they claim to attend?
It took me longer than it should have to find the course I am interested in within the cloud of courses, maybe there's an easier way of doing this?
Another problem is that if I pick a course and then have to pick a University it is going to be a long time before I find one with the UCAS score I want, or a certain drop-out rate so I wonder whether a table based view of the universities (once I've chosen a course) might allow me to sort by the fields I am interested in and then click on the interesting University.
Great idea though :)
I'll be honest I'm not really into the colour scheme (too much grey), and the list of courses is a bit too messy for my taste. On the other hand, the information provided is excellent!
Clickable: http://www.universityreport.co.uk