Cougar Dates

Cougar Dates is a dating site that aims to bring together the single students, alumni, faculty and friends of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. The site looks nice and has a simple, easy to navigate design. Singing up for the site is also very simple and quick. The profiles can be very detailed, but they let you skip most of those details when you sign up and let you fill that in later. Right from the start I can see that this is a site that a very specific group of people will like and enjoy, but most people will not.

There are about 600 members of the site with about twice as many men as women. You can search the members based on age range and distance from you or you can use the Super Match feature which allows you to use the details from your profile to better match you with people. Almost all of the members of this site live in or around the school. There may be a scattered member here or there, but almost all of them are located in one area. If you happen to be in that area, this site should work well for you. If not, then it will not be of much use to you. Luckily, you can search the site and look at people's profiles with your free membership. You only have to get a paid membership if you want to contact someone directly. This way you can check out the site and see how it will work for you before spending a dime.

Something about the site that let me down was the lack of extra features in the site. There are chat rooms, no instant messaging, forums or anything like that. Many dating sites offer these now, but this site does not.

The bottom line is a simple one. If you live near or are affiliated with the school this is a site you should check out. I scored it low because my score is reflective of how the site will work for the general population which is to say it won't work very well for most people, but for that specific group it does warrant taking a look at.