LGBT-Friendliness Rating of U.S. Colleges by Students, for Students

Washington, DC, October 19, 2007 --(PR.com)-- TopOutColleges.com, the hot new site where college students rate the LGBT-friendliness of their university, announced its launch today in a marketing blitz aimed directly at current and prospective college students. "Essentially, we contacted every LGBT campus organization we could get our hands on," says Brent Robinson, owner of TopOutColleges.com.

The site lists the top 500 most LGBT-friendly American colleges as rated on a ten-star scale by college students and alumni, according to their overall experiences with campus issues, i.e. life in the dorms, campus LGBT events, contact with campus LGBT groups, etc. As students and alumni rate their colleges, those rankings change and are displayed in real-time in a "Top 25" list. Colleges are also ranked and rated by their state, region, and conference for easy searching and organization for prospective students researching their future college. Additionally, each college has its own ranking page, where students can post event announcements and stories of their LGBT experiences on their campus. They can even post and rate pictures submitted by users. "While there are other formal assessments of LGBT-friendliness on college campuses, there are currently no sites which provide student-based ratings in a real-time environment rated by students," says Robinson. "We hope the site will become an invaluable resource for LGBT prospective students to make a more informed decision when selecting a college based on millions of current and past student experiences." Future resources and information will be added constantly to provide students with articles and videos to help students make more informed college choices.

The site is being launched as part of TopOutColleges.com's "One Million Votes" campaign. The idea behind the campaign is that if at least one million users vote, then the maximum effect will be achieved for the LGBT student community, considering that with every vote, the college rankings become more valuable. "Our vision is to get 1 million LGBT students to use their collective knowledge and experiences to rate all of the U.S. colleges on LGBT-friendliness, so we created this awesome website to do just that. The ultimate goal of this campaign is to improve LGBT-friendliness on college campuses, " says Robinson. "As users start to vote, it will become evident which colleges tend to float near the top, and which fail to make the cut. That is the kind of information that LGBT prospective students are looking for, especially since the ratings are coming directly from the students at that college. When prospective students start choosing certain colleges over others, those bypassed colleges will start to take notice, and hopefully will want to do something about it. That is why it's so important that students get on the site and vote, and we feel that 1 million votes is a great start."

And with the LGBT community out in full-force these days, reaching such a high goal might not be so unattainable. The buzz about this campaign seems to be all over some college campuses already. "It's so exciting to be part of something so worthwhile," says a college student who wished to remain anonymous. "This way, we can make our voices heard, while showing GLBT prospective students what it's actually like on our campus."

TopOutColleges.com continues to fan the flames as those flames continue to spread. "There is so much talk right now about 'leveraging the LGBT buying power'," says Robinson, "but we are leveraging the LGBT voting power, so it is vital that people get on the site and vote. We are calling on the LGBT community, both students and community leaders, to join us and help spread the word and achieve our goal of 'One Million Votes' so that the ultimate goals of this campaign can be realized."

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