<p>To college-bound freshmen: Will you be attending a college/university that you'd NEVER heard of before you started your college search/application process? </p>
<p>If YES, how did this school land on your list: Counselor recommendation? (school counselor or private?); Recommendation from friend or other? (If so, who?); Web search? Guidebook? Snail-mail propaganda? E-mail propaganda? Etc.?</p>
<p>My daughter will be attending Pomona. I don't know that she had never heard of it , but it was not on her list. Only two schools sent her unsolicited info - Pomona and Case Western. (She had not checked the "send me stuff" box on the SAT and PSAT.) So, I guess it does pay off for the colleges to send things out. I don't know how either of them got her name.</p>
<p>Snail mail propaganda. DD knew what she wanted and I would hand her these snail mails and encourage her to take another look. Then a piece came in that I made a joke about --it's so far north that you never see the sun all winter, the snow is sixfeet deep, and even the ethnics turn white up there.
DD took the brochure and looked up the web site and found she really liked the school. Then she told me the price. slam dunk!</p>
<p>I'm going to Grinnell next year, which I had definitely never heard of before my college search. I found it in a guidebook (Fiske, to be precise). I was skimming through it looking for small, selective liberal arts colleges with decent fin aid and Grinnell just popped :)</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback so far. It's always encouraging to see that some students are open-minded about college choices. </p>
<p>(TheresaCPA ... what college are you talking about?)</p>
<p>I'll be attending Smith, and let's just say that around here you're lucky if anyone's heard of Stanford (one of my friends is going there next year and most of the students thought it was a community college somewhere in Iowa!) let alone a women's college. I found out about Smith by doing a lot of research on my own. Before that my counselors assumed I'd apply to the University of Illinois U-C, Augustana, or Illinois Wesleyan. My parents didn't even know which schools I was talking about until last summer when I asked to set up interviews at top choices! (Oberlin, Smith, Kenyon, Carleton, etc...)</p>
<p>My favorite part is that a few of next year's incoming seniors (girls, obviously) at my school have started getting mail from Smith and other Eastern schools. :)</p>
<p>Congrats on making a good choice based on your own research, Irene. If you've visited Northampton (MA) already, you'll know that Smith is in a terrific college town. We all tend to think of colleges being located in "college towns," as if it's a no-brainer, but actually many of the better-known liberal arts schools are not in places that can hold a candle to Northampton. (BTW, this is from a totally biased point of view, since I happen to live in Northampton :) )</p>
<p>I'll be attending Claremont McKenna College this fall. Prior to the application process, I had never heard of this school. I just came across it on the internet one day the summer before senior year.</p>
<p>Before I applied, never had heard of Penn. I learned of it by browsing the web, and honestly, through here mostly.</p>
<p>I wound up going to Carnegie Mellon, and I heard of it from my dad during my college search. He had a friend that had gone there for metallurgical engineering ages and ages ago, so he said I should look there for their materials program.</p>
<p>Having met a few that attended obscure LACS out of state, I've always wondered this.</p>
<p>As a transfer, I sought out the colleges I applied to by region.</p>
<p>I was very close to attending Swarthmore which I had never heard of before junior year. my guidance counselor told me to look it up and when i read about it i hated it lol. i only visited because i had time to kill after my haverford and bryn mawr tours (both of which i didn't like). i really feel in love with it and was deadset on going. but while their financial aid was pretty good, they just couldn't compete with yale. most people think that i only chose yale because it's yale but swarthmore was actually my first choice (with yale in a very close second lol).</p>
<p>I found both my first college (McDaniel) and my transfer school ( Earlham) in the CTCL book. I have been researching on my own though since sophmore year of high school, but it wasn't until i spent a year in college that I knew what I wanted in a school.</p>
<p>I did a LOT of research on my own. I hate to admit it now but the school that I will be attending (Mount Holyoke) was actually an afterthought in the application process for me. I had tagged it as an interesting school in Princeton Review's Best 361 Colleges during my initial research (think: sophomore year) and forgot about it until I panicked in late December that I hadn't applied to enough schools.</p>
<p>I'm so happy that I'm a perpetual worry wart because I couldn't be more pleased with my choice in the long-run.</p>
<p>well, i go to BC and while i had defiently heard of it. i didnt know ANYTHING about it besides for that it was in boston and a whole family in my town went there. my mom put it on the list of schools i should "look" at and i loved when i visited it.</p>
<p>one of my friends went through every single college in 365 best colleges and made herself lists. applied to tons of schools she'd never heard of but wound up at NYU.</p>
<p>another good friend applied ED to haverford after her old basketball coach who went there told her about it</p>
<p>I'll be attending Amherst College.</p>
<p>I'm very fortunate that my school has a strong and very personal guidance department that gives such individual attention to every one if its students. I did a lot of independent research all throughout my junior year, diligently studying objective and subjective sources such as Princeton Review's Guide to Colleges, Fiske Guide to Colleges, the Collegeboard website, and attending countless info sessions at my school and a major college fair at the United Nations.</p>
<p>The info session really helped me get a better sense of what Amherst stands for, in addition to all the prior reading I did. I was sufficiently impressed, and decided to apply, and here I am.</p>
<p>I'll be attending Pepperdine in the fall. When I began my college search, I never imagined I would leave the East Coast for college. One night in the middle of my junior year I didn't feel like doing homework so I picked up my college guide book. While absentmindedly flipping through it, I landed on the Pepperdine entry and thought incredulously thought "There's a legitimate university in Malibu?". After reading about Pepperdine (I had literally never heard of it before), I realized it met a lot of my criteria: small but not so small you know everyone within a week, accessible professors, a strong study abroad program, and a relatively diverse (both geographically and otherwise) student body. Now, a year and a half later (after two campus visits, further research, and coercing my parents), I couldn't be happier. I guess that is one instance where my procrastination paid off!</p>
<p>I found out about Bowdoin when my friend in Class of 2011 joined a group "never heard of Bowdoin, its ok you wouldn't have gotten in anyway". I swear that convinced me enough to apply and in doing research it just kept coming up for all the good things.Food,people,dorms and academics. They did not have my intended major and I didnt decide to apply till the night before apps were due...Im sooo lucky and happy to be starting there in the fall!!!</p>
<p>We looked at a list of LACs and matched some out of area colleges that were close in rankings to some familiar schools. That resulted in schools like Macalester, Rhodes, Colorado College, Santa Clara, Occidental, Lewis & Clark, Rollins making our list. The other thing that put some unusual schools on the radar was the fact that he wanted something different from his rigorous, traditional college prep private school. The Maritime colleges, Deep Spring, Webb, Colorado College, Cornell College, Northeastern showed up as possibilities, along with some business programs such as Stetson, Fairfield, Cornell Hotel School. Low sticker price meant a look at James Madison, Mary Washington, Elon, state schools, Flagler, Grove City, York. Good merit possibilities added Fordham, Sienna, John Carroll, Ursinus,Providence, Manhattan College, Susquehanna to the list. Then came the arduous task of getting lists down to size since a few other schools caught the eye in more traditional ways.</p>
<p>I'll be attending Notre Dame. My entire family (immediate, extended, etc) is full of ND fans, so I have been surrounded by all things Notre Dame-related since birth. It has always been my dream school.</p>