After reading this article I was almost completely blasé. Regardless of whether or not that is my reaction to most things, the reason I didn't actually care about this is because I believe in people learning from their mistakes. The prospective students aren't losing fingers after clicking on these fake ads, they're losing maybe ten minutes of their time, and, if they're the absorbent type, they're probably gaining the ability to have a more critical eye.
If someone thinks that they are at a point in their life where a post-secondary education will be useful and applicable, they should know how to use google. If one wants information about Champlain, they could start by googling it, and the appropriate path would be:
Google.com > "Champlain College" > Champlain.edu
It should not, however be:
No, hold on a minute. I literally cannot not get to Champlain unless I type something completely unrelated.
If you're going to enroll in a college, you shouldn't be going to "champlaincolege4free.nz" At this point in your life, and in this day and age you should be going to a first party website with a legitimate URL. Spend two minutes on the page, and if it doesn't look like Yahoo circa 1999, and isn't offering you a Nigerian prince's money, you're probably good.
While I do however agree that is is crooked to do what CollegeBound was doing, I think people should be intelligent enough to take what they find after 30 seconds on the internet with about a metric tonne of salt. I would never go through a third party survey to hopefully acquire information that could easily be attained by either sending an email, or more than likely filling out a first party text box with your name, address, and phone number. The only third party things I used were those mandated by my high school teachers, and it's not like they did me any good. I took the SAT, I applied to Champlain, talked to some of the faculty about what they were looking for, and made myself presentable.
Now this is a reveal, because it shows that I'm not the kind of person who believes that the correct route is to apply to Princeton, Yale, and Harvard as your "Reach Schools," Champlain, Marlboro, and NYU as your "Target Schools," and these as your "Safety Schools."
If that happens to be your method, though, maybe you're just trying to pepper as many schools as possible with your SAT scores, transcript, and a fill-in-the-blank cover letter. This method, though, isn't impressive to me, because it could more than likely end up landing you in a school that doesn't fit you, and god dammit, you're paying way too much to be somewhere you don't like. I think people should to a preliminary search of applicable schools (which many high schools will give you time to do in class) narrow it down, and then apply to a select few colleges that you know will be excellent for you. And that does mean time and effort. Probably the same amount as applying to every school you come upon, but the effort is focused on maybe five schools at the very most, and if you're dedicating your college research to those school, you should be damn well sure that your reaching them, false advertising in your initial google search or no.
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