How did you choose school criteria?

<p>This might be somewhat of a stupid question but please bear with me.
I'm a rising senior and the first in my family to go to college so I've been pretty lost with the whole process. Right now, I'm trying to decide where to apply but I honestly don't know what to do.</p>

<p>I've looked at college search engines (on CC, Naviance, College Board, etc) but I just get more freaked out when I look at those. As of right now, I have yet to visit any schools so I don't have opinions regarding school size or school location. I haven't decided on a major yet and I don't really care much about ethnic distributions or religion. If I don't get a chance to visit any schools, does anyone have tips for choosing schools?</p>

<p>Currently, I'm mostly looking at East Coast and California schools that are somewhat selective and possibly have swimming and or water polo. It would be great if I could get into an Ivy but realistically, I'm looking more at top 50 to top 100 schools (mostly chosen based upon their prestige factor since I'm lost).
Since I don't have many opinions of schools I'm really open to anything though.</p>

<p>Any advice, tips, comments, recommendations, and the like would be appreciated!</p>