A Decision Chart.

<p>I like reading the schools newspapers- gives you a feel for the campus vibe and good way to find out what has been going on for the past year or so, by reading the archival issues. </p>

<p>Am very curious which schools?- perhaps, if you list them, you may discover some helpful tidbits of info, to assist in the big decision ;)</p>

<p>Percentage of students who graduate in 4 years and is it fairly easy to get the courses you want or need to graduate when you want or need them?</p>

<p>How much freedom or flexibility does your daughter want with course selection? Some colleges have a lot more in the way of core and general ed requirements than others. Your daughter might want to take an in-depth look at the catalog's for each school to develop an understanding of all general ed or distribution requirements, and what courses are required for the majors that she is most interested in. For example, are there specific requirements for math & foreign language, and is she o.k. with those? If your daughter has AP credits, check to see how much credit the college will give for each and whether that will exempt her from a general ed requirement or allow her to skip introductory courses. With all that in mind, she should figure out what her fall schedule will likely be, in terms of required courses. She may find that things look very different from one college to another in terms of the freedom she has with course selection.</p>

<p>Calmom brings up a good point - some colleges/majors will accept a lot of AP credit to offset courses required to be taken and some don't - they might count as credit but not offset many courses. Courses that are offset can save money on the attendance of college. For my D's in engineering at the UCs, the APs counted as credits but didn't offset many courses due to the heavy particular courseload for engineering.</p>

<p>I agree with Chevda (post #16). The metrics suggested by other posters are excellent, but it strikes me that this young lady is stuck among three equally good choices -- "paralysis by analysis" I think it's called. It's time for a gut check IMHO.</p>

<p>Thank you all, the chart is made and will be fully discussed tomorrow. If she is still stuck I am going to try Chevda's idea.</p>

<p>gadad, these schools are so far below the CC radar that no one would have heard of them, but they are just what our D was looking for in a college.</p>

<p>Sadly the place where both my boys said "this is my tribe" didn't accept my senior! (Caltech btw.) And my younger son doesn't even like math or science!</p>

<p>Don't worry about being below the radar. DS is at a college almost never discussed on CC and he's as happy as clam, and doing amazing things he probably never would have tried at a higher profile school. In fact, he's so happy there we've just been informed he's thinking of going for a second major.</p>

<p>we looked at male/female ratio for a decent balance, culture that matched d (less gucci bags) and I trolled through rate my professor dot com to read up on teachers in her prefered major.
a prof. friend says kids that love or hate you tend to send in ratings and the zillion others you teach don't care enough to bother, so it is very skewed. Within that though you can sort of see if most kids can't stand dept. members or most love them.</p>