Noodle.org School Search Site Review & $4,000 Scholarship Giveaway

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I remember when Kora & Logan were in preschool and it came time to find an elementary school for them. We had a variety of choices to select from and I really didn’t know which to choose. The school sites were not very helpful, they had limited information and were very low tech. I did searches for reviews online and came up with nothing. This baffled me. How could it be so difficult to find information about places that will shape our children’s futures? Places where they would spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 3/4 of the year? How was I supposed to make an informed decision without any information?

It was an aggravating, frustrating, and anxiety ridden time. The school we finally picked has turned out to be a good choice but I still wonder what the other schools had to offer that I didn’t even know about. That’s why I was excited to learn about Noodle.org from the creators of the Princeton Review.

Noodle.org is a new education search site that provides free access to education information and interactive learning.

It offers a personalized recommendation search engine to help you find the best schools and programs in your area. You can search for:

K-12 Schools
Colleges
Graduate Programs
Study Abroad Programs
Tutors
Test Preparation Programs
Guidance Counselors
Educational Consultants

I thought it would be interesting to use Noodle.org to search for elementary schools in the area we are planning to move to this summer.

Once you fill out a short form to register or connect through Facebook, you can start searching right away. I clicked “Start a K-12 Search” and then was able to enter my preferences.

I typed in the location, selected the distance, grade level, and characteristics. I was impressed to see that I could also enter preferences including gender, school size, and diversity.

A number of schools popped up and I liked that I could compare them side by side. *Note this is not the search I did, just an example.

The profiles were very informative with grade level information, co-ed or single sex, number of students, student:teacher ratio, and more.

This was more info than I was able to find when I was searching for schools when Kora & Logan were younger. I was happy to have these details especially the number of students and student:teacher ratio and this will help in selecting the right school when we move.

I played around on the site and when searching for colleges, it asked me to input information including my SAT and/or ACT scores (which could be bypassed for the search as well), my high school name, my GPA, and year of graduation. It then asked me a series of multiple choice questions including what do I like to do on Saturday nights, my ideal work load, college size and location preferences, and a few more in depth questions.

It was nice to see that the search updated in real time. It showed a large list of colleges in the beginning and the more questions I answered, the more it narrowed down my search.

After I answered all of the questions, my college search results were reveled. According to Noodle.org the following colleges all rated a 9 out of 10 in being a match meaning they would be a great fit for me:

John Carroll University
Baldwin Wallace University
University of Cincinnati
University of Findley
Miami University – Oxford
Capital University
Otterbein University
Ohio University – Main Campus

I was excited to see that John Carroll University was recommend since that’s where I went! All of the other schools that were recommended, except for Ohio University, are on par with John Carroll in size and style of campus. I’m very impressed that Noodle.org was able to pinpoint the college I actually attended as well as many of those I visited back in high school.

*Again, not my specific search just an example.

The full profile of the colleges is very informative too. It reveals

The most popular areas of study
Student:faculty ratio
Percentage of tenured faculty
Accreditation and graduation rates
A list of all majors
Student geography and socio-economic diversity
Incoming freshman class profile
Admission considerations and requirements
Housing information
Tuition breakdown
What percentage of undergraduates are on financial aid
List of rankings by Forbes, US News, and College Prowler
Graduate outcomes including where most graduates live, most popular careers, and where they work
…much more!

While Noodle.org is a fantastic search engine for schools, colleges, tutors, test prep, and more it also offers hundreds of thousands of free learning materials. With everything from Sesame Street clips for kids to tutorials about how to multiply fractions and even videos teaching how to read music there’s truly something for everyone.

You can probably tell by the length of this post that I’m impressed and amazed by Noodle.org and the amount of educational information it offers. I also must admit that I’m terribly jealous that it wasn’t around when I was trying to choose a college, while I was at JCU, and when I was trying to select an elementary school for Kora and Logan. It’s a wonderful site that helps make those tough educational choices easier and you can even do a lot of learning along the way.

I can’t close out this post without letting you know about a fantastic giveaway Noodle.org is currently running for a $4,000 Scholarship! Simply visit Noodle.org and fill out the short form to register to win. You don’t have to be a student to enter and once you do, your site account will be set up so you can immediately start searching for educational information.

The giveaway ends March 29th, 2013 so be sure to hurry over there today for your chance to win! Good luck and if you do win be sure to come back and leave a comment letting us know so we can congratulate you!

No products were provided. Compensation was received. The honest opinions are my own.