<p>Our school wanted a list of schools to send transcripts to in December. We had visited about a dozen, but knew we wanted to add more to our list (we were short on reaches, which we thought it was worth giving a shot for, and we had no legitimate safety) We used Fiske, USNWR, schools other kids from her HS had gone to, ones suggested by her friends (esp those with similar academic interests and personalities) schools DW and I knew, and even a couple of threads I started here. </p>
<p>We managed to narrow it down to "only" 25 or so.</p>
<p>what did you do? There are THOUSANDS of colleges? Did you really check out each one? How did you narrow it down?</p>
<p>Some were obvious – in-state publics
A few were favorites at his HS, some better known than others
One I learned about through cc
A couple were carryovers from his Questbridge app
The rest were faraway LACs that just felt “right.” He ended up at one of those.</p>
<p>Because ds isn’t convinced of what he wants to study, we kind of cast a wider net rather than focus on schools that were good in “his area.” And because I could see the changes in him, I encouraged apps at all kind of places – big, small, in-state, OOS, public and private. So when the results came in he still had a wide variety of schools from which to choose. He only applied to three places sight unseen and, not surprisingly, they were never in serious consideration.</p>
<p>We have too many choices, too, for son in h.s. class of 2012. I am trying to push a “can be reached without connecting flights” requirement. That is one thing I have learned from my daughter who is at a college two flights away. </p>
<p>Look at the typical door to door time from your house to the freshman year dorm. Look at inconvenience rather than distance as the crow flies. A friend mentioned once that, for example, although Pomona College is far from Ohio, it is not awful to get from Cleveland to Pomona because there is one flight and Pomona is not far from the airport (ONT) at the other end.</p>
<p>I actually put some thought (a few brain cells) into every USNWR tier 1 LAC and tier 1 National University, plus many other schools for which we knew alums. This is especially hard for undecided kids, isn’t it? </p>
<p>My son is trying to push a “can wear cargo shorts and flip flops in January” requirement.</p>
<p>The big winnowers for many kids:
Big vs. small (nothing under 5,000 or nothing over 2,000 kids, that sort of thing);
urban vs. rural (if you like Columbia, you won’t like Grinnell);
for lack of better words, “preppy” vs. “quirky” (you wouldn’t have both Oberlin and Washington and Lee on the same list.)</p>
<p>My kids narrowed it down themselves LONG before their senior years began. DS applied to seven schools, and DD applied to four. </p>
<p>Each of them visited about 20 schools between tenth grade and the beginning of twelfth grade. Both read about and talked to folks about schools. We did many visits along with family vacations in the areas where our kids were interested in attending college. This made it all very doable.</p>
<p>We have never had a USNews, Fiske Guide or anything like that…never owned them, never read them. The rankings of the schools didn’t matter to my kids (or me) as much as what the school had to offer our kids. </p>
<p>We got a few suggestions of schools for DD to consider from folks on this site. DS got his info from music teachers (he’s a music major).</p>
<p>My kids were very pragmatic about college choices. They knew the types of schools they liked and the types they didn’t like. We also insisted that they go to school either within a 3 hour drive of here or within an hour of a close relative or friend. </p>
<p>Honestly, I can’t even think there would have been 25 colleges my daughter would have considered…she only applied to four. She really WANTED to attend one of these four schools…and that was that. No need for a long list. She had one reach (didn’t get accepted) and three solid matches (got accepted to them all…including her top choice).</p>
<p>The big winnowers for many kids:
Big vs. small (nothing under 5,000 or nothing over 2,000 kids, that sort of thing);
urban vs. rural (if you like Columbia, you won’t like Grinnell);
for lack of better words, “preppy” vs. “quirky” (you wouldn’t have both Oberlin and Washington and Lee on the same list.) </p>
<p>DD wanted nothing above 10,000 and we never did find a school that was TOO small, so that wasnt a big limiter. well other than knocking out two of the three of our obvious instate publics</p>
<p>She was mainly indifferent to the off campus community - she liked Columbia AND Colgate, as it happened.</p>
<p>First cut: Colleges that appeared to fit sons’ needs in terms of size, location, majors – and that also seemed affordable. Affordable was the most important thing.</p>
<p>Course variety has turned out to be quite an important criteria. Therefore, only schools with an established engineering program AND a good selection of languages taught OR an established international relations program, could make the first cut. After that, we decided to stick with schools that had a history of taking kids from Ds high school (the gc was very helpful with this even though we have no access to Naviance).</p>
<p>Brooklyn…are you looking for the specific criteria my kids used? If so, DD had a few: urban setting, 5000 undergrads or so, nice weather (aka no snow), good engineering program…good sciences overall, ability to take private instrument lessons and play in the college orchestra (not a wind ensemble…an orchestra) as a non-music major. That last one was the hardest to find. As it happens one school to which she applied was huge and one school was not urban. But they fit the other criteria.</p>
<p>I dont just want to know criteria, I want to know data sources, where that isnt obvious.</p>
<p>There are, to repeat thousands of colleges in the USA (assuming you ruled out foreign schools)</p>
<p>Some say you looked at schools you already knew, or knew from personal contacts. One, like us, used USNWR as a list. </p>
<p>Did the rest of you use Barrons and look at EVERY school in there (where you had narrow geo range, I could see that could work). Did you use a different guide?</p>
<p>DD didn’t want tiny and didn’t want HUGE but she wanted engineering and the right “fit” - she cast a wide net based on schools that matched on paper and their websites though I wish I had found CC far earlier as I think our list would have gotten even smaller and we may have added a few but our issues, that we didn’t even quite realize, were the impact of CSS Profile and the NCP form. I also wish we’d never checked the lists it wasn’t something she cared about. She also cast a wide net in terms of locations and in the end realized she really wanted to not be too far from home with it being reasonable to travel (no high transportation costs) and in the end we were waiting with fingers crossed for the school that ended up fitting everything she asked for, or IS flagship.</p>
<p>I’m taking a completely different approach with D2 and my S in a couple years, though definitely planning on starting visits earlier. The sports my D1 was involved with year round made visits hard and I think our list would have shortened itself more had we had the time/budget to visit more.</p>
<p>“Brooklyn…are you looking for the specific criteria my kids used? If so, DD had a few: urban setting”</p>
<p>I am more interested in process. How you got the universe you applied those criteria to.</p>
<p>Some of you guys had specific enough academic reqs, like music, or tight geographic area, that the number of schools was not that big to begin with.</p>
<p>I am thinking that for those of us without such requirements, some guide with SOME indicator of ‘academic quality’ was useful in cutting the search to manageable proportions.</p>
<p>we did the individual college websites more for our SECOND cut. When we went down from 25 for transcripts to 10 for applications.</p>
<p>I am thinking you guys had more time for first cut research. we did our second big college tour in August before senior year. We hadnt really started making a list till then. and then all the AP assignments just started avalanching (and DW and I were not going to do this without DD of course). ADHD at TJ, I could write a book. Then it was a few days before the transcript deadline. We had to go with a long first list.</p>
<p>For my younger daughter I am using the Colleges that Change Lives website for a start, then both the College Board on line form and the College Confidential on line form. She wants under 5000 (preferable under 2000), liberal arts, no real “required” courses, campus, no more than 60-40 female-male balance, etc. It’s a start but, you’re right, there are so many schools, you just have to choose 50 or so and narrow it down based on what seems to be right.</p>
<p>Decide on your major, look at the college websites, view the course catalog, find out about the school’s finaid, and then compare stats and other things you want in a college.</p>
<p>My kids started out with the annual US News (or sometimes Newsweek) college issue, which contains an extensive listing of colleges by state. They checked off each school they were interested in, but because they knew they didn’t want certain geographic regions or states, they cut hundreds of schools from the list just by deciding they didn’t want to go as far away as the Pacific coast or the southwest. Using the same source, they checked schools for selectivity, number of students (didn’t want anything too small), urban/suburban, and whether merit aid was available. </p>
<p>The youngest two used several online college searches, including the ones on College Board and Princeton Review, applying the same standards for geography, selectivity, etc. I’m not sure when CC introduced its own search function, but the youngest used it to confirm her initial list. The oldest and middle ds applied to 8 schools each; the youngest had a similar number on her list but was accepted at her ED school before submitting most of her apps.</p>