Hello everyone.
I am an international student in senior year of high school. I’ve received acceptances from the following:
University of South Florida ( with scholarship )
University of Utah
Iowa State University
Illinois State University
Western Washington University
Northern Arizona University ( with scholarship )
Kansas State University
I also applied to San Diego State University and University of Arkansas but I haven’t heard anything from them yet.
I wanted to make my final decision but I am unable to decide. I plan to take Biology or Biomedical sciences as my major and I want to pursue Med school after undergrad.( I have a plan B in case Med school doesn’t workout for me. )
What should be my criteria to select the college?
What should be my deciding factors?
I am utterly confused and have no idea what I should do.
I have looked into the fee structure of all the universities before applying, they are more or less in the same range for me. Also the weather and location of all the universities listed are comfortable for me.
So what else should I be looking at?
Can someone please help me narrow down my choices. It will be great if you could just tell me the order in which I should be considering these universities.
If I were you, I’d make a spreadsheet with these criteria:
School name
Location
How much you have to pay out of pocket (including loans) every year
Maybe include a couple rankings like USNews and Princeton Review so you get a sense of how “prestigious” the schools are based on various parameters.
4 year graduation rates. If you plan on going to med school, the last thing you want is to spend the money& time on extra years of school if you can avoid it because at some schools it’s harder to get certain classes than at others.
You can add other things like
-Do you like the campus
-Do they have the exact major you think you’re going to want
-How much do graduates of the universities make
-Often universities lead to internships, and jobs in the same area. Can you see yourself living in all of the areas the universities are in? Given the particular political climate in the US, as an international student you might feel like you’re more comfortable in certain areas over others.
To lay it all out in a spreadsheet makes it much easier to visualize the different pros and cons of each school. For example, if it was me - Unless there’s some overwhelming reason to consider it, I’d eliminate U of Arkansas, U of Utah, Kansas State.
I don’t have time to do research on every single university on your list, but I’d bet that SDSU is the best one on your list. Also, I can tell you I had multiple friends go to Western Washington University and LOOOOVE it.
In terms of weather, I think that the weather in Arizona, CA, and Washington would be the nicest, but that’s totally personal preference. I also like being near the coast.
IMO these are the best schools on your list:
Iowa State University
University of Utah
my preference would be Iowa State. one factor to consider would be your surroundings. Iowa State is in a small city of about 60,000. interestingly it is the #1 ranked school in Biological / Agricultural Engineering. this would probably indicate that ISU is particularly strong in Biological sciences.
Utah is much more urban, in the heart of Salt Lake City, whose metropolitan area is about 1.5 million. it recently ranked in, i think, Forbes magazine as one of the top 10 cities to live for 2017. if you strongly prefer urban over small city / rural, you might go with Utah. it is very heavily Mormon, and i do not know if this would be a factor for you. SLC might be more convenient for air travel.
if your scholarship makes South Florida significantly less expensive than other options, i might choose USF instead. if they are close cost-wide, i would go ISU, but you might prefer the more urban campus and surroundings of Utah.
also if you strongly prefer mountains then Utah, plains then Iowa State. both will be quite cold in the winter.
