One-Stop College Shopping

Looking for a resource to help ease the process of applying to college? The Portland, Oregon-based company CollegeNET, Inc. (www.collegenet.com) offers a free Web site where users can search for general overviews of colleges and universities and information on financial aid and scholarships. But it also aims to make the process of applying to college a bit less taxing, too. The company was recently granted a patent covering its widely used system of automating the online college application process. That means students filling out multiple admission applications need not retype common info, such as name, address, or home phone number, when applying to different schools that use CollegeNET's technology, known as the Universal Forms Engine.

If a student applies to a second school that uses the services, then any common data elements between the forms are automatically filled in, which can save time when applying to multiple schools. Boston University, Ohio State University, and M.I.T. are among the schools using the technology. (See the site for a full list of schools that use it.)

Hundreds of colleges and universities have hired the company to host their official forms for not only admissions, but also housing, tuition, and parking applications.