Last year, as a high school senior, I felt as if my life had been taken over by the College Board, by the U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges Guide, by the Fiske guide to colleges, by the Princeton Review. I bought all the big-name books and read all their Web sites because I wasn't convinced I was getting the true story.In the typical generic and overpriced book, there is about a two-page description of each university with a few cherry-picked quotes by students, which may or may not be representative of the student body's experience of the college as a whole. These insipid descriptions frustrated me. I didn't feel I was getting my money's worth from these ridiculously expensive books. I would sit in my room at night poring over lists of seemingly arbitrary rankings (the Princeton Review, for instance, rates "fire safety" at colleges on a scale of 60 to 99) and wondering if I was wasting my time. Staring at the pages before me, the same question kept popping into my head: I wonder how much money these companies are making ripping off anxious teenagers like me? The thought never failed to anger me.

Jordan Goldman, a 26-year-old who graduated from Wesleyan in 2004, apparently had the same idea as I did. A couple years after graduating he contacted several Wesleyan alumni with his business idea: to start a free Web site with information about colleges for students, written by the students who attend them. Goldman now works on Park Avenue in New York City and has 25 employees, all recently graduated themselves, who are each responsible for 10 colleges, including, of course, the college they attended. Their contacts are students at the college in question who make videos on campus and gather student-written reviews to be published on the Web site. The site, Unigo.com, is considered by those who run it as a sort of grassroots movement dedicated to releasing information that is not controlled by the corporations or the universities, but rather by the students themselves.

I was impressed by what I found when I browsed the Brandeis entry in Unigo.com. The Web site was only launched this September, but there is already a wealth of information; I came across around 60 reviews written by students as well as six videos, some pictures, links to student publications on campus and all the important statistics a senior might need.

The student reviews and videos-all of which the site publishes unconditionally-were far more honest and insightful than the literature I have read from transitional sources. I saw one video of a student discussing stereotypes on campus (such as "Brandeis is really Jewish,") and the extent to which he feels they are true. I saw articles that expressed the view that the political culture at Brandeis is dominated by leftist activists and also statements asserting that the liberals on campus are not at all overbearing. I saw truthful (and sometimes harsh) accounts of the quality of the food available on campus.

The reviews I read were thoughtful and told from the point of view of disinterested students, which is refreshing in this day and age. As Goldman told The New York Times, "colleges have been able to have this stranglehold on the P.R. image of their school." If Goldman's operation meets with all the success it deserves, they no longer will. My only regret is that I entered college one year too soon to take advantage of it. Perhaps the Web site could be expanded to include graduate schools?