… in terms of stuff like the following:
A. Course requirements for intended majors.
B. Entry to major requirements for intended majors.
C. Offered upper level courses and frequency of offering in intended majors.
D. General education requirements.
E. Class size and capacity in courses of interest as listed in class schedules.
All of the above. Especially because I work in higher ed. I’m comparing course requirements right now and because S19 is looking to engineering it’s pretty easy to compare.
Very! DD (and I) pulled up all the details of the course curriculums before we even went to visit most schools. We printed out the four year recommended course of study for her major for all her schools.
We researched first year engineering curriculums, when and how majors were declared, if AP courses transferred, gen eds, minimum GPAs to progress, ease in scheduling, graduation rates for her major and outcomes, etc…
IMO, that’s the most important part!
VERY!! We have the normal spread sheets (ACT scores, UG size, COA…) but then there’s another more detailed spreadsheet devoted entirely to curriculum.
He wanted as many creative writing classes as possible as well as other “interesting” english classes. If they had any Gaelic History classes, they got bonus points. The school he ended up choosing, you have to submit portfolio work in order to get into the 300 level courses for creative writing, but that obviously didn’t sway him. He said if John Green can still make a go as a writer after being shut out of a 300 level class as an UG, then that’s good enough for me.
He also liked how a few of his other school dealt w/ distribution requirements better, but again not enough to change his mind.
We also heavily researched study abroad as that is definitely something he wants to do.
He already has a general roadmap of classes for FY.
As an undecided kid who wants a women’s college, there’s a limit to how picky my kid can be. 
I made sure that the intro classes for her current intended major did not conflict with her foreign language of choice. That actually eliminated a couple of schools before she narrowed it down to women’s colleges.
And then your kid changes their major.
My D16 applied as an English major. We looked at required courses, course offerings, etc., at the time. She was also considering a second major or a minor in music so we investigated how difficult that would be at all her schools. Both factors weighed into her school selection. Now she is a junior and she is majoring in economics and minoring in Chinese. So much for all the research.
I wonder this question myself! We have looked at your A-E items plus other things including looking up course schedules, who are teaching the course (by name), and reasearching these profs/staff. We have found many telling and surprising things such as many undergraduate courses are registered for not knowing who will be teaching to the courses on campus are primarily only offered online with only 1 teacher teaching everyone (100s and even 1000s in some cases). Also, the couse cataloges and even syllabi are on line, easy to find, and very informative. Another issue that is tougher to find out - can student register for the courses they need when they need it? There are many schools that do not offer enough classes to handle the number of students who need the courses. The students are sometimes forced to take courses in the summer to graduate on time or take longer to graduate. And sometimes students are taking courses they do not need or want in order to take full course loads.
I doubt that the typical student or parent considers any of the listed factors when choosing a college. Instead I’d expect a more typical level analysis to be someone (GC, parent./relative, friend, USNWR, …) recommends a college to the student. The student might then consider whether the recommend college offers their desired major and check out the college website in addition to considering things like location, cost, and having a reasonable chance of acceptance. CC forum members aren’t a good representation of typical applicants.
I interview students for a HYPSM college. Among other things, we usually talk about why they’d like to attend, how the college fits with their interests and career goals, and so on. Many of the students I interview seem to have little knowledge about what the college offers in the field they plan to pursue besides vague information about the college being good in their desired field or having a strong general academic reputation. One student I recently interviewed mentioned planning to major in a field that isn’t offered at the college.
I would say we looked at D and E as well as majors offered when deciding where to apply. We did not dig into the details of A-C until he was deciding between the final two. We had a comprehensive spreadsheet at the end - it was a lot of work!
Another important factor to S was the ability to double major or major/minor.
We looked at D and A, but did not really get into B,C, or E. My son’s college search was rather limited – he had a small geographic area of interest, and a particular type of college he was interested in. Academic details like those in the OP were not significant considerations in choosing which of the few colleges that otherwise met his criteria to apply to, but were considered after admissions offers were received and it was time to decide which college to attend.
For my oldest it wasn’t quite how you delineated it but when she got down to a top 3 we looked at a rough schedule of how her next 4 years would look. Mostly that was to compare a large UC on a quarter system vs a couple of small LACs on semester systems and how much ‘play’ there was with regards to doing a semester abroad or deciding to double-major.
Have to agree, based on what people often post on these forums. Most responding in this thread appear to be outliers in terms of attention to these details.
I found that to be true as well. We toured an Ivy fairly early in the process. S and I went armed with one question that we couldn’t find the answer to online, all other aspects of his search were easily found by a 5 minute read of their bigfuture.org page. Yet when we sat in the info session, every single question was about those easily looked up aspects. It really turned DS off to the school. He couldn’t fathom not researching a school before going to see it.
We looked a lot at A/C & some at D.
A/C) because before she decided on a major, seeing the course listings really helped her think about whether it sounded like an interesting major to her or not. After she decided on a major, the track that major takes varies quite a lot from school to school so she needed one that offered the emphases she wanted. It really helped narrow it down. Her college has 5 tracks within the major, two of which fit her preferences pretty well. (And if she decides to change majors, this college has every major that she ever considered.)
D) because she also would like a second major or minor so I was hoping that the Gen Eds weren’t too onerous and/or fit well with the DE’s she has taken to cover several. As it turns out her choice does have a fairly high Gen Ed requirement so it might not all fit but the main major will be the priority. But we noticed she liked certain GE offerings there, for instance, it was the only one of her options that had Plant Science as a GE so that was a tipping point.
B & E are not much of a concern for the places she was looking.
Seems like that is more of a reflection of the aspiring students (most of whom will not be admitted if the school is an Ivy League school) than the school.
You’re right, and I can’t remember his exact words but he said something to the effect that he was turned off by the fact that the studnts were there b/c they were “supposed” to be there, not b/c they actually felt like it was a good fit for them. Same as comment above stating confusing fit with prestige. The whole visit ended up being a no for him, that was just one aspect. But it’s the one that sticks out for me.
We are looking at the factors you list, of course, but we find it more useful to look at the CVs of the profs in the department of the intended major. You can get a pretty good sense of the vibe and direction of the department. I’m able to do this because I’m in higher ed myself and have a pretty good understanding of the field she wants to enter. If it were a different field, I’d probably have to ask a colleague for help sussing all that out.
We’re also looking at the gender diversity among the faculty in the male-dominated field my D wants to enter, since that’s an important factor to her. Of course, this is all provisional thinking because she probably will change majors at some point (as many students do), so we are only considering schools that are decent all-around schools as well (mostly large publics).
In short, this feels much more like my grad school search than an undergrad search. I guess when you’re shelling out so much money, you take it more seriously! Plus the internet makes all this possible. We shall see if it pans out.
Edit to add: class size isn’t an issue for D. She loves lectures, and doesn’t think class size is a major factor for her.
We looked at almost everything. We really only looked at current fall/spring classes to get an idea. Everything else was considered. Other factors that were highly looked into were graduate classes taken as undergrad, dual majors, course sequences, how dual enrollment might factor etc My daughter also wanted to enter directly into her major and not have to apply again later on and wanted to make sure classes were taught by professors not TAs.
By this do you mean:
?
Also, for courses where the primary instructor is a faculty member, does it matter what type of faculty member may be used (professor, lecturer, adjunct, etc.)?
We have tended to look at all but C (…frequency of offering in intended majors), which truly turned out to be a big factor for one kid in going forward in particular concentration of the major.
Actually E (class sizes and capacity) has been quite important as a beginning data point, though thus far it has not exactly eliminated a college or university from being placed on the list at the early part of the college selection process. Where I may balk at a typical class size at a college, or am floored by the size of a lecture class, not one of my older kids has thought this would play a role in whether the academic structure and offerings at a school would feel right to them.
A (Course requirements for intended majors), B (Entry to major requirements for intended majors) are always looked at as a family.
Sometimes the next year’s course requirements for a major will have undergone a significant restructuring than that which is in place during the year one applies, and it has been useful and necessary to get help to understand just how those changes may impact the student experience.
D (General education requirements) is something we tell each kid to really sit down and look at, as it can shape and color their assessment of feeling throttled or not.
Being told that attending a university where every student will read exactly the same literary texts as students did 200 years prior, was a huge point which soured one kid from even applying, though there were only 14 students in the entire department of the intended major. For the next kid, who applied and was accepted, both the GE and the Core were considered simply interesting courses which expanded on some nascent areas of interest for second kid.
I think when a kid can sit down and ask him/herself if they can see themselves sitting through however many survey-level courses before ever getting to anything interesting, or if they understand how to get right to the interesting stuff (where allowed) and still utilize the course planning wisely to ensure completion of every GE by their anticipated graduation date, they begin to feel a sense of ‘driving the bus’ themselves, and it helps them in feeling confident moving forward.