The question of where to attend college is one that comes up at various times throughout your life. It usually starts long before high school, perhaps over dinner with your parents or when you settled on Harvard after watching Legally Blonde. Were all influenced in one way or another, either by a school list sent over by your high school or a late-night Google search. But when it actually becomes time to put together a school list, a lot of our clients have no idea where to start. If youre currently in the not sure where to even start boat, keep reading for three tips that might help streamline the process.
1. Analyze your stats.
The most important thing in choosing a college is admissions viability, which is a fancy way of asking if you can actually get into any given school. So, if you got a 28 on the ACT and have a 2.6 GPA, youre not going to get into Stanford. This sounds harsh, but honesty and being realistic are two crucial factors when it comes to creating a school list. So before you set your sights somewhere, consider your performance in high school thus far. Look at your grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities. Then be honest! Is it worth applying to Ivy League schools? Should you be looking at state schools? Will higher in state application statistics be a factor? If youre not sure what tier you should be looking in, look at the admitted student profiles at the schools that youre interested in. You want to be right within range (more on this later this week) for it to be considered a target school. Keep these statistics in mind as you look to diversify your list.
2. Visualize the future.
It might be hard to think about what youre looking for in a college experience because, well, youve never been to college. A good way to start is to think about what you might want to major in and the kind of academic experience that will make you happy. Think about the classes that youve loved in high school and start doing some research on majors and programs that align with your interests. At first, it doesn really matter which college youre looking at. Give and a try because they have a lot of options. Once you have a list of majors that you find interesting, you now know that you want to apply to colleges that offer Biology and Chemistry majors. Or maybe youre looking a school that offers Dance as a minor, or a more specific English program. After admissions viability, academic programs should be the most important thing on your list.
After youve got a major (or a few majors) picked out, you can start to think about things like size, location, and culture. This is where you can start to have a bit more fun: make a list of things that you think will make you happy in college. Do you want there to be big and fun sports programs? Do you want to go to a small school? Google the difference between liberal arts schools and research universities. Think about the kinds of people you want to be around, the types of special opportunities youre hoping to take advantage of, and also consider location. How far away, or how close to home, do you want to be? Write the list down and move on to step three.
3. Get specific.
Let say that you decide that you want to go to a small school on the west coast with a political science program. From there, youll want to start finding schools that align with your goals. The best way to find them is through good old-fashioned internet research, and were going to explain exactly how to do that later this week on our blog. Even though you might not be sure where you want to go, were fairly confident that youve at least heard of a solid amount of colleges. Find what you like and identify what won work and use that as a springboard for researching additional schools.
Deciding where you want to apply to college can feel daunting if you try to figure everything out in one day. We recommend making a list of schools that youre interested in and then dedicating 15 minutes a day to doing the research. Write down your initial thoughts, see if theyre offering virtual tours, and catalogue everything. Narrowing down the list will be much easier if youve already gathered your notes and just need to refresh your memory.
Contact us here if you need help getting started.