BROWSING FOR A SCHOOL : STUDENTS USE INTERNET OVER CATALOGS TO RESEARCH COLLEGES.

Byline: Bob Weinstein The New York Times

When Anne Stevens decided to transfer to a different college for her junior year, she turned to friends - and to her computer - for information.

Now, thanks in many ways to what the 21-year-old Smith College student learned from browsing college home pages on the Internet, she is hoping to transfer to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, next fall.

``Brigham Young's home pages were easy to read and very informative,'' said Stevens, who made her decision without visiting the campus. ``Part of their application was on line, which makes it easy to apply. Once you fill it out, they send you the rest.''

It was second nature for Kris Carde, 18, a freshman majoring in computer engineering at the University of California, Davis, to use a computer to research colleges. He visited many of the 12 schools he considered while he was a senior at Amherst Regional High School in Amherst, Mass., but he did most of his research over the Internet.

A veteran hacker and programmer, Carde calls himself a mouse potato - the computer equivalent of a coach potato - who found much on the computer not available in a catalog.

``I wouldn't have felt comfortable choosing a school based entirely upon information found on its home page,'' he said. ``There is more to a school than what you find on its Web site. Still, the school's home page gave me information about configurations of the computer labs, dorm layouts and student activities that had not been included in the school's catalog.''

In recent years, colleges of all sizes have joined the march to provide Internet users with access to information via a home page. Often these pages were designed for and by students on campuses. Increasingly, however, the pages have evolved into marketing and recruiting vehicles that are being tested for their ability to attract new students to a campus.

``Initially, rudimentary pages were put together by brilliant teen-agers,'' said Robert Thornton, vice president at Teikyo Post University and formerly associate director of admissions at Vassar College. Teen-agers, he explained, were among the few who understood the coding, called hyper text markup language, that is the programming language for the Internet. Many colleges also have had home pages created by students, and the practice is spreading.

``Many schools are commandeering their entire computer science departments to create splashy home pages,'' Thornton said.

He warns that college home pages are in their infancy and being tested without long-term projections about the ultimate effect on admissions.

``I don't think college home pages will replace college catalogs,'' Thornton said, ``but I do think they will one day revolutionize the application process. It gives students a whole new way to research schools quickly and thoroughly.''

David Merkowitz, spokesman for the American Council on Education, a Washington-based organization that represents 1,700 colleges, agrees.

``The Internet represents another recruiting tool that colleges can't afford to ignore,'' he said.

Colleges are also finding that home pages can eliminate much of the paperwork associated with processing applications.

Many schools are testing home pages that allow students either to download an application into their computer or to fill out an application on line and send it back through the computer.

Some pages feature high-tech enhancements like sound and graphics that let potential students take virtual-reality tours of the campus and surrounding community.

Other pages can instantly link to related home pages about special programs and faculty or student-created pages.

Michael Stoner is a Web page and site designer who is vice president of a college media relations firm and a member of the International Interactive Communications Society, a professional group.

Stoner cited UCLA (http://www.ucla.edu) as a school that is considered ahead of the pack. UCLA has 250 Web sites and 50,000 content pages. And the site is kept updated by a full-time, professional four-person team. The school paid Box Top Interactive, a Los Angeles Web-site developer whose clients include large corporations, more than $75,000 to help speed users' access its home pages with a gateway to the sites.

A 1995 survey by MIT, for instance, found that the increased use of home pages and e-mail on the Web made a ``very real difference in our recruiting efforts,'' said Michael Behnke, the admissions director at MIT.

That year, MIT received 110 e-mail messages from prospective students. ``Ultimately, 84 percent of the students who e-mailed us enrolled at MIT.''

At New York University - where a virtual tour of New York City has been created to jazz up the admissions page (http://www.nyu.edu) - Richard Avitabile, director of admissions and enrollment management, said inquiries over the Web have increased by 200 percent.

``At the moment, we feel it will enhance our marketing approach,'' he said.

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Photo: Freshman Kris Carde, 18, of Amherst, Mass., used the Internet to study colleges before he chose the University of California, Davis.

The New York Times