Competitive companies

What I found when I looked further into the research is there is nothing like my idea out there. There is no one website creating a online community for students, run by students. There are online community within each university, so you could interact with people on the same campus as you but nothing to bring you together with other university or to help you decide which uni is best for you. These three of the closes sites I could find to my idea.

The student rooms

This is a website where student can go to talk to each other and connect. It is mostly aimed at students about to go to university. It gives them advice about personal statements, finding accommodation and gives advice when choosing a university. It also give student option on certain university. A lot of the topic discussed within the site are not academic and  when they are it tends to be aimed at A levels. The website is also very informational heavy, there is a lot of the material to look though.  

The difference between this website and my idea, is that my idea content is purely generated by the students. I also want it to be a academic site focusing on coursework, exam and study aids.   

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/

UCAS

This is the main website for students starting university. It is used to view all the possible course within the UK and the entre requirements. Each student seta up a online account that allows them to fill out their university applications. Containing their personal statement and a choose of the top three course they want to apply for. This process is normally closly monitored by a teacher at the secondary school, making sure every student who want to attend university has the chance. 

The biggest down side about this site, it is does not give you any information on the course you are looking to join. It give you the entre requirements but not any real information about the course for that it links you to the university page. 

I do think that this website does have some good aspect to it. I really like the fact that you are able to look at all the same course at all the different university over the UK. It is simple to use and I believe this is something I could build upon. 

http://www.ucas.ac.uk/

University course pages

Each university has a webpage that displays the course available. It explains a bit about what the course is, what you will study over the next 3 years, what the requirement are, things like that. However you have to ask yourself how true really are these pages. I have used Digital Art and Technology for an example. The pages makes the course sound very exciting and creative. No where on the page does it state that you will be learning programming languages, not even in the modules break downs. 

I find this very misleading because IDAT does have a lot of coding and this page is the reason people turn up expecting a different course. I want to give students the opportunity to see what a course is really like, not what it is marketed as. 

Facebook groups

The last company I am going to look at is Facebook. When anyone say online community everyone mind automatically goes to Facebook. There are millions and millions of different groups on Facebook. Different groups for different university and course. Facebook could probably do everything my company could do. 

However the information would not all be in one place they would have a troll though millions of groups to find what they were looking for and even then the information might still not be related. It would make it hard to compare the information. There would also be no way of knowing if the information being giving was true or not.  

http://www.facebook.com/Ayaan.Aahat?ref=ts&fref=ts