Creative Writing Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 318 creative writing schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 306 creative writing schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 98% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 64.2% of the 318 creative writing schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 8.5% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Yellow (8.2%), blue (7.2%) and black (5.7%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on creative writing school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest creative writing schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
2. University of Central Florida: white 46% and black 1.6%
3. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: white 28% and grey 3.2%

Font

The largest number, nearly 44%, of creative writing school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on creative writing school websites include Verdana (21.1%) and Helvetica (9.1%).

The largest creative writing school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Arizona State University: Arial
2. University of Central Florida: Arial
3. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: Helvetica

Social Presence

Exactly 244 creative writing schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 804 YouTube channel subscribers. The creative writing schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 113,180 subscribers
2. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers
3. Columbia University in the City of New York: 4,146 subscribers

Exactly 273 creative writing schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,861 Twitter account followers. The creative writing schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
2. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers
3. University of Wisconsin - Madison: 16,729 followers

Web Metrics

Although all creative writing schools have websites, only about 22% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 78.5% of creative writing school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The creative writing schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Creighton University: 7,788 broken links
2. Manhattanville College: 4,422 broken links
3. Eastern Washington University: 4,378 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on creative writing school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The creative writing school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Foothill College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Berkeley City College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Florida State University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The creative writing school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. Old Dominion University: 0 HTML validation errors; 615 CSS validation errors
2. Eckerd College: 14 HTML validation errors; 558 CSS validation errors
3. Franklin and Marshall College: 13 HTML validation errors; 434 CSS validation errors