People who know what their dream college is, the kind of place where you would apply ED- How did you find it? What were the most important factors in that decision? Any reccomendations on how I should be looking? I’ve found plenty of colleges I like, but nothing that screams at me yet.
I’m a junior in highschool looking to do a pre-med track and major in some sort of micro or cellular bio, also intrested in immunology. 1440 SAT, 680 Math and 760 Reading and Writing, scores are expected to go up a little bit. 3.9 unweighted 4.46 weighted, expected to be a 4.57 by the end of the year. Florida based, but I’m intrested in going out of state. Where should I be looking?
Start by identifying schools with characteristics that you desire based on size, geography, stats, majors/minors, school spirit, etc. Princeton Review, Kiplinger, CollegeBoard, and Naviance have college search engines that may help.
For a specific school, look at gen ed requirements, course offerings and requirements in the majors you are interested in, as well as bios and research focus of professors.
Visit schools if you can.
The most important factor for many students when choosing a school is their budget…what can/will one’s parents pay for college. Clarify this with your parents sooner rather than later. Run net price calculators on each school’s site to estimate what it will cost to attend.
Typically in-state publics are good values, so don’t necessarily ignore those…you have many good and varied options in Florida. Med school is expensive, so if you get that far, it’s best to have $ left to fund that with minimal to no undergraduate debt.
Lastly, dispense of the idea of a ‘dream’ college…it is unlikely that any one school will have all of the qualities that you want, generally there will be trade-offs.
I agree that I would stop focusing on finding a “dream” school. That simply doesn’t fit for most people and I’m not sure it’s a goal students should have.
My daughter put a lot of pressure on herself to find that dream school. Every tour she took ended with the tour guide explaining why they chose xyz school. In our experience their story often involved just KNOWING that xyz school was for them the moment they walked on campus. That never happened to my daughter and she thought it should. It made for a stressful application process at times. Sure, there were schools she liked a lot more than others but she never had that one “dream” school. She did not ED anywhere for that reason even though her favorites were schools were ED would have helped her odds immensely.
The problem with dream schools is they don’t always work out. MANY of the kids I know who had 1 dream school did not get into that school and were devastated. They felt the ONE school that was perfect for them was now off the list and they now had to settle for second best. I recommend you spend some time thinking about what you want in a school (major, location, size, cost, opportunities, vibe, etc.) and start developing a list of schools that check your boxes. Be flexible and realize that your list of what is important may change as you start doing tours. Your might find that a school you thought you’d like isn’t what you expected on a tour and you might also be pleasantly surprised as well. I would hope you’d end up with several realistic options that would all be good fits and worry about deciding which one is the best fit until after decisions are out.
@Mwfan1921 gives excellent advice. I would add an important piece to the puzzle. Don’t get fixated on “A” dream school, but rather a TYPE of school. There are tons of great schools out there that check all kinds of boxes. Determine what boxes you NEED and WANT (different options) and then use the many tools available online to search and start assembling a list.
Some things to consider in developing the list:
Admissions Selectivity
Honors College
Major / Minor
Cost
Location (region of the country)
Location (rural, suburban, urban - very different feels, things to do)
Size
LAC type / Larger Research University
Focus on undergrad vs. grad
Campus housing .Do most kids stay on campus
Sports culture
School spirit
Greek culture
Destination report / outcomes
Career Services / Employer activity
I’m sure there are many more. Unlikely you’ll find any school that checks every box you want and that’s not that important, as long as there’s the ingredients for you to take the ball and run. Also, have a serious conversation with your parents early (like now) regarding cost. Learn what’s realistic. No point in exploring schools you can’t attend (however fine to apply in search for merit provided you have backups in place).
FL has very inexpensive state schools. They are ranked well and gaining in national popularity but they’re not for everyone. They weren’t / aren’t for my kids either but most we know who attend really enjoy the experience. The good news is, I hope, that maintaining high rankings will require appropriate resources being spent on faculty, housing, classroom space, etc.
It’s okay not to apply ED, and it’s okay to like lots of schools and not love any of them.
My kid’s initial criteria:
not bigger than her enormous high school
not less racially diverse than her high school
walkable campus and surrounding area, as opposed to a car being a necessity
minimal or no religious affiliation
Parent initial criteria:
affordable
not predominantly a commuter school
kid would not be a complete academic outlier
That produced a list of about 150 schools, one of which was local to us. She visited and felt that school was probably too large and preprofessional, which further narrowed the list. Another school was an easy flight and was having an open house; she came back from that knowing what too small felt like. She decided she was unwilling to take SAT subject tests. She looked at supplemental essay prompts. She looked at Niche to get a sense of campus feel (she’s been a political outlier at her school and wanted to fit in more at college). The list at this point included two schools in close proximity to one another; visiting them caused her to decide she wanted a women’s college. Read all the women’s college descriptions in the Fiske Guide and added a couple schools based on that. Visited the added schools and they came back off the list. Thought really hard about fit and went for a revisit at one school that felt best. Decided that it wasn’t perfect, but was as close as she was going to get. Will apply ED.
Six months ago, I’d have told you that there would be no parent approval for ED. One month ago, the list was 9 schools long and my kid was completely opposed to ED, feeling that she needed more time to decide.
Because this particular school is a match for her, and the ED1 decisions will come out 12/15, it’s the only school she’ll apply to before decisions are out.
Another voice to say you are better off not having a dream school but finding a fit at many schools. The reality is that there are thousands of schools in the US and you can be happy and successful almost anywhere.
My D didn’t apply ED anywhere. Her top choices only had EA.
As an intended pre-med, you are going to want to keep your undergraduate costs as low as you can. That, IMO, should be your first screening criteria.
Talk to the pre-health advising office. Look at their placement rates for med school.
Visit different types of schools if you can - flagships, small LACs, urban, rural, etc…
Sit in on a class. Talk to as many students as possible.
Thanks for all your advice! I guess I had really fallen into that trap of the college spokespeople talking about their “perfect campus”.
Just one thing more thing, about college size. I’ve lived in a small-medium town my whole life and I go to a small highschool, less than 150 kids in each grade. Do you think if I go to a big city or big campus for a tour I will be able to tell if I like that enviroment quickly, or am I just going to have to take a leap of faith?
We started out looking at a few options close to home but of different sizes, more urban and more rural. School visit number one was 3000 students in a small town and school visit two was 20,000 students in a city. It was fairly easy to “feel” a difference and see what was more comfortable. The second topic was distance from home and being able to travel for holidays without being stuck in an airport with weather delays narrowed the radius from home down to a reasonable driving distance. Once you have a preference for size and distance, you can move on to majors and cost. Lots of people focus on budget first but if you don’t have an idea of what schools to look at, it’s hard to figure out what they cost.
As a more specific suggestion than in the (helpful) comments so far, research the biology programs at the undergraduate-focused NESCACs (see their biology department websites). If your standardized scores do go up as you anticipate, you’d be a good candidate for several of these colleges.
Research based on the programs, campus type, settings, etc., etc. that you are looking for.
We started by visiting some local schools - none that would make our list, but it helped to see college/campus alternatives/variations.
When you visit, make it substantial. Not just an info sessions and a tour. Walk around, eat at a dining hall, try to arrange to meet with a professor or sit in a class. At the end of the day, you’ll probably know if it’s somewhere you could succeed.
Don’t put the bar so high for a ‘dream’ school - be realistic. My D had 2 schools she really loved, and 2 others that she would be very happy with. Plus 2 that she just could’ve see working for her. Interestingly, they were two of the most popular schools for her HS. So don’t worry about what others think.
DD’17 got “the feeling” about her college on a visit, DD’19 did not, and that did worry her. So it turned out my more emotional child had to take a more analytical approach. She made a list of wants, had a fairly rare major and a small budget so it got narrowed down pretty quick. For a while she thought she wanted to get away, then realized being closer to home was nice. Decided if she wanted to move away from the area she can do that as an adult that doesn’t have to move out of a dorm every summer.
Her wants list and knowing her major helped. Reading through major requirements, course descriptions, and gen ed requirements helped. And visits, especially ones where she met with a professor, helped.
We did two rounds of college visits. Junior year, we tried to visit a lot of different types of schools, so our son could get a sense of his preferences regarding school size, class size (even a big school may have small classes, particularly in an honors college), rural vs. urban, Greek life, area, etc. Senior year, we did a round of visits to schools that had accepted him - he applied to schools we hadn’t visited junior year, so most of these were not repeat visits. My son was not laser-focused on college and, because we live overseas, he didn’t know much about the various options. Before our junior-year tour, we had spent a couple hours going through a simple questionnaire I found in one of the college books that addressed the issues at @rickle1 listed above, among others. He had also attended sports camps at a couple of large universities - Cornell, UC Berkeley and UCLA. Based on those experiences and his thought process in responding to the questionnaire, he was sure he didn’t want a really big school, so we focused on mid- and small-sized schools. After that junior-year tour, we thought about whether he should apply ED, but in the end he decided not to and that was clearly the right decision. He never had a “dream school” and I support everyone who has advised you that identifying one is neither necessary or a good idea, but he did gradually get a sense of what would be an ideal type of school for him, and when he found it, on our senior year tour, he recognized it right away, even on a horrible cold and rainy day. In the end, he chose a smallish midwest LAC in a small town about 30 minutes from a large city, where he can pursue all of his academic, artistic and athletic interests, and he could not be happier. Although we did not qualify for financial aid, he received a very substantial merit award that helps a lot. You have great stats and from what I understand from others here, where you go is not really key to your success when applying to med school, so it seems you should focus on what would be most fulfilling for you during your undergraduate years, while trying to keep the costs down and save money for later.
A “dream college” should be affordable, offer your major, be realistic based on your qualifications & be located in the geographical area/region that you prefer.
LACs tend to have stronger dominant “personalities” than do National Universities.
Do you want small class sizes from year one including introductory survey courses ?
Do you desire a degree of daily anonimity ?
Job prospects–after all, college is an investment preparing one for the work force.
What is attractive to one varies from person to person.
Rural/suburban/urban campus is another factor to consider.
Is “intellectual stimulation” important to you ?
My point is that what constitutes a person’s “dream college” depends upon that individual’s preferences & needs & abilities.
Start by determining what is most important to you.
If I could redo my college years, my dream school would be selected, in large part, on the basis of location.
Attractive locations include Santa Barbara, California, Charleston, South Carolina & Burlington, Vermont. Additionally, I would enjoy almost any large university located in The South or on The West Coast.
If forced to name names, then additional schools would include Georgetown, Michigan, Northwestern, The University of Victoria, British Columbia, the University of British Columbia, McGill University, and about two dozen others.
So, in answer to OP’s question, “how did you find your dream college”, it was by accident. But, I am older now and there are many more resources available to aid one in selecting a seemingly ideal school, so the process is much more methodical now.