<p>I know not to worry about prestige but instead look for the best program in your major but how do you find out which school that is? Can you trust school-ranking sites? </p>
<p>How about job recruitment? Undergrad research? Acceptance to grad school?</p>
<p>What about the social environment? For example, I am not a party-goer but I still like to go out with friends. I don't like the whole greek system and I prefer smaller campuses. How do you determine which schools meet your criteria if you can't afford to visit? </p>
<p>So how do you know which school's you'll be content with?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t even say that you should look for the best school in your major, because college freshman often change their majors AND you only take about 1/3 of your courses in your major. Plus careers are often not based on majors. I would say unless you are going into a very pre-professional major like engineering, your major should be a consideration but not the final word.</p>
<p>It’s just a variety of things that are important to you. The career office’s resources; the libraries’ holdings and study spaces; the number of student groups. But many times it’s much smaller things. Like the fact that they have a thriving old improv group or an all-women’s a cappella group. Or that they have a great Model UN program. Maybe you like their substance-free housing or they have some weird old tradition that replaces partying and boozing in freshman year. Maybe they have a sprawling Greek system that 60% of the school joins, or none at all. It’s never one thing, but a collection of things that come together to make a school a good fit.</p>
<p>And even then, don’t necessarily expect to feel the “glove” kind of feeling - where you read the glossy mag or step on campus and just realize that THIS is the place for you. I felt that at all three of the colleges I visited when I was applying, because they were all appealing in different ways. You WANT that! You want to feel happy and content at multiple colleges, and you can make your decisions in April.</p>
<p>Visit the school’s webpage and browse through the student life pages. Sometimes the way they describe the student body can give you clues. You can also see if you can find some current students on message boards like this one. Sometimes they congregate.</p>
<p>you get a good book about college admission which has chapter after chapter covering how to pick colleges that you have a shot at getting into, understanding financial aid, how to determine which ones are a fit, what to do on a college visit, and more. One book I like is called “Admission Matters”; there are other good ones as well.</p>
<p>Some things to do include 1) make a realistic assessment of your admissions statistics to see where you are 2) talk to your parents about what you can afford 3) research – use tools such as guide books, Naviance, price calculators, talking to your guidance counselor etc. to come up with a list of schools that make sense 4) visit schools, ask lots of questions, and see what types of environments and what schools you like (don’t discount gut feeling as part of the decision process).</p>
<p>The top schools on school-ranking sites are usually quite strong schools, but if you only look at school-ranking sites, you miss out on a lot of equally strong schools who just don’t play the game to increase their rankings. It sounds like you already know a few criteria, so go to some of the many college search engines and start plugging in small schools, little or no Greek life, what you hope to study. The search engines will prompt you to think about other questions, such as what area of the country, religious affiliation, rural/suburban/urban campus, and will ask your stats as well. This will help you narrow down schools and you can then spend more extensive time on their web sites doing a deeper dive. If you can’t afford to visit schools you might apply to, at least try to visit some local schools to get a feel for what you want in a campus. At some point you really need to make an effort to visit finalists, but there is a lot of due diligence you can do first.</p>