Not sure to which college you want to apply but also not willing to hit the road on a college tour? Then surf on over to The U and see what you’re missing.The U offers on-demand peaks at MTV-style tours of 50 major US colleges. Site founder Doug Imbruce claims the genesis for The U came from the intimate celebrity lifestyle revelations divulged on MTV’s “Cribs” television series. The U is the marketing website for the DVD’s containing the full-length college tours.
The U’s greatest hook is in the customizable nature of the DVD’s. Each DVD The U sends can contain up to 14 hours worth of video. Pick and choose from the list of schools and pay just $3.99 per school video burned to the DVD.
The video tours are quite extensive. They include analyses of the school itself–costs, gender breakdowns, courses and majors–and the community surrounding the school. For instance, I learned from viewing the Brown University vid that Providence, RI has a long and proud Italian heritage. It is definitely possible to get more out of these videos than it is spending a day or a weekend tooling around campus.
Important school and community stats are artfully rendered throughout each vid, and the videos employ the fast-pace editing style familiar to the MTV generation (both of them). They are entertaining, informative and a positively sneaky way to get your youth hyped about flying the coop and hitting the books, undergraduate-style.
That’s why The U garners a .com Dish! “E” for everybody.
