New Search Feature Idea - by Degree?

[keepsingin]

I thought an awesome addition to this forum would be a search feature that categorizes users by their degree(s), and maybe even further classifies by which college they went through. That way, you could put your degree in, and you could see each user who's done/is doing the same degree as you, and then you'd be able to further see what posts they've made, questions they've asked, etc. In a limited way, I've utilized this idea and gotten a lot of questions about my degree answered; it's just extremely time-consuming with the current setup...it involves HOURS of reading!

Because there's SO much info on here, it takes forever to find the info/answers you're looking for, even with advanced search. I realize it's probably not as simple as it sounds to implement this...I'm sure everyone's profile would need to be overhauled, among lots of other headaches lol.

Anyway, this is just brainstorming, because I love to find ways to streamline things. Absolutely no complaints from me; this forum is so incredibly helpful, and there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of people on here that deserve a massive shout-out for all the help and information on here! The truth is that most of the time you guys are more helpful, insightful, and even more friendly than a lot of college advisors, and you're not even getting paid for it!

[davewill]

There are some fields in the user profile that could be used for it. Either "interests" or "job" strike me as good ones. I tried putting my degree info into interests and had no problem searching and finding myself that way. However it's always problematic to get people to fill in their profiles.

[jsd]

Yeah, a simple forum plugin would make this easy, but if no one is filling in their profiles as davewill says, itd be useless

[bjcheung77]

I think the search feature works great and as intended, the way I see it, there's no need for an extra feature if no one enters relevant info for that search criteria to work. When I do a search, I do sort by date and type whatever I am searching for. I PM anyone I see who has responded to those threads with questions if I wanted more info.

On the other sister forum, someone responded to a thread that was 11 years old, and the original poster hasn't logged in for those 11 years! That's the main reason I don't respond to posts after a few months, unless someone revives that zombie thread...

[dfrecore]

I do think it's really hard to search here sometimes. Not always, but if it's something specific that you want, and can't remember where/when you read about it, and it's fairly generic, then it can be impossible to find that thread again.

But, once in a while, I will just have to post "hey guys, I can't remember where I read about XXX" and someone will send me the link to the exact post! I don't know how they do it, but they do. It's pretty cool.

I will also say though, that I am pretty good at figuring out degree programs at TESU - so if someone only wanted to search for people with "like" degrees, then they would miss me almost every time, with my BSBA in HR (almost).

[Nixi]

I do think it's really hard to search here sometimes. Not always, but if it's something specific that you want, and can't remember where/when you read about it, and it's fairly generic, then it can be impossible to find that thread again.

But, once in a while, I will just have to post "hey guys, I can't remember where I read about XXX" and someone will send me the link to the exact post! I don't know how they do it, but they do. It's pretty cool.

I will also say though, that I am pretty good at figuring out degree programs at TESU - so if someone only wanted to search for people with "like" degrees, then they would miss me almost every time, with my BSBA in HR (almost).

Whenever I need to find anything here, I go to Google and search site:degreeforum.net along with the keywords for the appropriate topics I'm searching for in quotes and that has always helped me.

Sometimes people have stuff like specific courses in their signatures and that brings up the wrong threads, so I use site:degreeforum.net and intitle:title of thread I'm looking for.

[keepsingin]

I use...intitle:title of thread I'm looking for.

This is pretty helpful...not sure how I overlooked this obvious feature lol.

[cookderosa]

searching here can be tough, that's true. The thing about degrees, is that it's all about WHEN they earned the credit and WHEN they earned the degree. For instance, if you took the Spanish exam last year, it could be worth 12 credits, but this year it's only 9. That makes a difference in degree plans. Also, if you read my posts about earning my BA in Social Science, you'll have a huge mess on your hands. That degree distribution has changed twice since then! When I earned my degree, 200 level courses were considered upper level.
I know it's frustrating, but just keep reading and posting daily- you'll get on top of it in no time.