This is a guest post by Damon Ebanks from University of Scranton Scholarships for teachers Program. 

Internet research is without a doubt the best way to get information about online graduate degrees.  The problem is, with thousands of colleges nationwide and even more websites offering all sorts of information, searching for the right online degree can be daunting and often lead to many frustrating dead ends.  Keep reading to get some insight on the common pitfalls to avoid, advanced search techniques and credible online sources you can reference while searching for the degree that’s right for you.

Let’s say you’re interested in a graduate degree in education, and do a simple search for “Online Master’s in Education.”  The first thing you’ll notice is that not all your results are universities that offer online degrees.  Some results will lead you to guides that will help you look for the master’s degree, but they are not the actual school.  While these types of sites can have some helpful information, they are usually limited and more focused on generating revenue by obtaining leads and selling them to bidders.  Unfortunately, the highest bidder is not always going to be the highest quality institution.  Often these sites put on the appearance of being the definitive source for a certain region of the country or field of study, when in fact the schools mentioned on the site are simply paying the website owner to show up there.  Your education and career may be at risk if your search stops there and doesn’t dig any deeper.

So, before you begin your search, you should be familiar with a few advanced techniques that can be employed while researching with search engines.  Google Web Search is full of advanced features that can help you narrow down your results and lead more quickly to the master’s degree that’s best for you.  Keep in mind, though, that even the most proficient internet searchers – members of Google’s search group, for instance – use advanced features less than 5% of time.  If you use the right key words and a couple of free and easy tools, the simple search is often enough.

When you’re searching you can use square brackets [] to denote queries.  For example, [to be or not to be] indicates a single query, while [to be] or [not to be] would be two queries.  As you look for a college you can use “site:edu” to limit your results to educational institutions and not the for-profit websites mentioned above.  An example might be [site:edu “degree”].  While not all online schools will contain the .edu extension, like the University of Scranton’s online programs do, by adding edu you will be filtering out most of the unsavory sites.  The more you experiment with searching techniques and specific key words, the more luck you’ll have with your results.

Another great idea is to create a new folder in your shortcuts, or “favorites,” and as you find the most relevant websites, save them in this new folder. Later, once you have exhausted your searches, you’ll have all of the best websites in one convenient location.

In addition to Google research, there are a few other places you’ll want to check out.  U.S. News and World Report is a widely used and highly respected source for providing rankings of the best schools in the country.  If you start with one of their “best of” lists you’ll be off to a strong start in your online graduate degree search.  Finding the right school should take some time, but only to a certain extent.  With the right tools and techniques, your graduate degree search will be shorter, but much more valuable.

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