<p>I'm almost a rising senior (4 weeks till the end of Jr year! Wahoo!) and my problem is that everyone seems to already have their college lists drawn up except for me. I vaguely know about 3 schools that I'll definitely apply to but other than that I'm lost. I feel like visiting a college before deciding to apply to it is really important but I haven't done many visits at all. My question is, how do you compose your list of schools that you want to apply to without having visited them?</p>
<p>I should also add that I want to major in political science so pretty much every school has my major. I also have no idea what type of size that I want, but I think I'm more interested in a school with less than 10,000.</p>
<p>I found that visits were really helpful. I was able to eliminate schools pretty rapidly once I started with visits. Little things made me realize that I would not be a good match at some schools that looked good on paper.</p>
<p>The Insider’s Guide to Colleges book was also helpful, though not definitive.</p>
<p>The Students Review website also helped a lot, but take info there with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>Of course, US News is another place to start.</p>
<p>I’ve thought of Oxford of Emory, Virginia Tech, Purdue, and so on…</p>
<p>Right now I have: U.Va (always been on there), CWPU, Syracuse, 1 or 2 lower tier Va schools, and my safety, Radford. </p>
<p>Will it change again? Yes…</p>
<p>Just keep searching. Look for schools that excel in what you want/think you will major in. Schools that have good job placement for your major, and most importantly, in my opinion, the vibe. I’ve searched hours and my list is still always changing.</p>
<p>Here are some top political science programs:
Political Science</p>
<p>1 Harvard 4.88
2 Cal Berkeley 4.66
3 Yale 4.60
4 Michigan 4.60
5 Stanford 4.50
6 Chicago 4.41
7 Princeton 4.39
8 UCLA 4.25
9 Cal San Diego 4.13
10 Wisconsin 4.09
11 Rochester 4.01
12 MIT 3.96
13 Minnesota 3.95
14 Duke 3.94
15 Cornell 3.85
16 Columbia 3.84
17 Ohio State 3.69
18 North Carolina 3.54
19 Texas 3.49
20 Indiana 3.45
21 Johns Hopkins 3.37
22 Northwestern 3.35
23 Washington 3.34
24 Washington (St. Louis) 3.29
25 Iowa 3.25
26 Virginia 3.24
27 Rutgers 3.24
28 Michigan State 3.24
29 Maryland 3.23
30 Illinois 3.20
31 Pittsburgh 3.15
32 Cal Irvine 3.14
33 Houston 2.96
34 SUNY Stony Brook 2.92
35 Arizona 2.89
36 Emory 2.88
37 Georgetown 2.85
38 Florida State 2.82
39 Colorado 2.78
40 Syracuse 2.77
41 Cal Santa Barbara 2.74
42 Penn 2.68
43 Arizona State 2.67
44 Notre Dame 2.66
45 Georgia 2.66
46 Cal Davis 2.61
47 George Washington 2.57
48 CUNY 2.57
49 Tufts 2.51
50 Hawaii Manoa 2.49
51 Wisconsin Milwaukee 2.48
52 Florida 2.48
53 Rice 2.43
54 Kentucky 2.42
55 Brandeis 2.41
56 NYU 2.40
57 South Carolina 2.39
58 Purdue 2.38
59 Massachusetts 2.37
60 American 2.37
61 Cal Riverside 2.36
62 Southern Cal 2.33
63 Nebraska 2.33
64 Kansas 2.33
65 Vanderbilt 2.32
66 SUNY Albany 2.32
67 Connecticut 2.31
68 SUNY Binghamton 2.27
69 Penn State 2.25
70 Denver 2.23
71 Oregon 2.21
72 SUNY Buffalo 2.06
73 Wayne State 2.04
74 LSU 2.02
75 Boston College 2.00
76 Oklahoma 1.94
77 Claremont 1.80
78 Missouri 1.79
79 Northern Illinois 1.77
80 Utah 1.74
81 Boston University 1.69
82 Cincinnati 1.65
83 North Texas 1.64
84 Howard 1.62
85 Temple 1.54
86 Tulane 1.49
87 New Orleans 1.45
88 Washington State 1.39
89 Tennessee 1.36
90 Texas Tech 1.20
91 Texas Dallas 1.18
92 Northern Arizona 1.17
93 Kent State 1.14
94 Fordham 1.12
95 Catholic University 0.95
96 Clark Atlanta 0.60
97 Idaho State 0.33
<p>Try to look at some more of them this summer. And look at your stats and see what kind of schools people with those stats get into…and go for a dream school too :)</p>
<p>I got Princeton Review’s Top 368 Schools, went through, and crossed out every school that
was over 10,000 students
had SAT score mid-ranges far below (or above) mine
had a low quality of life
had over 30% of students involved in greek life
had under 70% living on campus</p>
<p>These were just my priorities, but I think they would apply to a lot of people. I wanted to find places where I would be happy, not completely lost in a swarm of people, not in a school dominated by frats, or in a place where tons of kids went home on weekends or after class. I think this is probably an excellent strategy if you are academically strong enough to attend an average to upper-tier school. Just by doing this, I got my list down to 30-40. Then, I read through the description of each college left. About half sounded unappealing to me, so I was down to 18. I couldn’t cut it down any further, so I decided to visit all of them. If they’re not too far from where you live, it’s not too big a deal. The schools further away I’m grouping to be efficient. If you aren’t willing to visit, I would double check with another college book or on this website to help you get down to around 6-12 schools where you will apply. Good Luck!</p>
<p>those book guides (fiske, princeton review, etc.) are absolutely fantastic. if you don’t want to buy one, go to borders with a notebook. flip through, find ones with your test ranges, that appeal to you (size/location/greek life/EC/etc.) and list as many as you want. then just start looking into them as closely as possible… i like the princeton review website (free registration) - it’s got a lot of information about the schools’ student body, stats, academics. also, if you type in the schools you’re already vaguely interested in, many of these guides and sites will suggest similar schools, or schools that attract similar students.</p>
<p>^
Yeah they are, not surprise. Uh… I’ve always known Princeton University to be a great school, one which I said I wanted to attend my younger years… though now I know it’s small student body size etc… not attracted to it as use to. Oh yeah, so princeton review is put together by princeton students right ( sorta forgot, and may get a quicker answer than googling it).</p>
<p>Princeton Review is not affiliated with Princeton University…and you can know this because Princeton doesn’t get the highest rankings in that book haha</p>
<p>My strategy was a little bit different. I knew I mostly wanted to be urban, so I made a list of cities that I’d be willing to live in. I visited all of the schools that interested me in NYC and Boston and narrowed it down to six in those areas. Then I added other schools that interested me in other regions, some urban and some not, with the help of guide books.</p>
<p>I never really put so much thought into my list personally, because I felt that as long as the school had an academic atmosphere that I was flexible enough as a person to not care where I went to school. ( I am close to my family) Also, I had always wanted to go to the same school since my freshmen year, so basically I picked other schools that were similar to my dream school.</p>
<p>Here’s what I did and I think it’s worked out perfectly.
Visited a diverse set of schools that apealed to me when I read about them in college guide books. I visted American University, Warren Wilson College, Connecticut College, and Trinity College, and realized both urban schools and large schools were not for me when I visited American. The other 3, however, I loved.</p>
<p>After that, I looked for schools throughout the USNWR rankings in a range of schools I thought I’d like and what I thought I would be able to be accepted to (the lower half of the top 50, then some in top 100 to get a good mix of reaches, matches and safeties).
The higher on the list of USNWR, the more selective a school is in general, but not always by any means.</p>
<p>My E/Cs aren’t great–
Track 4 year varsity letter (captain next year)
Soccer-4 years, JV captain last year
Speech and Debate–11 (first year team was founded)–secretary
Key Club–4 years (just lost for a position on the board :()
About 200 hours of community service
Congressman’s Youth Advisory Council
Elementary School Tutor
REBEL–team leader (organization that goes to schools encouraging kids not to smoke)
Collected and donated 400 dresses to an organization that distributes prom dresses to inner city girls
SGA–2 years (if I win this year I’m running for secretary)
NHS–running for office next year</p>
<p>if you read through the Princeton Review Best 368 Colleges, Fiske Guide To Colleges and US News, you should know what colleges to appeal to you and what colleges don’t</p>
<p>I started building a list earlier this year. Unfortunately, I ended up with a messy hodgepodge of worthless data. Yesterday morning, I had a sudden epiphany. Here’s what I’ve done:</p>
<p>2) I removed all colleges not in the USA or Canada.</p>
<p>3) I placed these in spreadsheet columns, then added a column for the total score (in points) of both categories combined.</p>
<p>Now I have a ranking of 67 schools that are good in science and tech to work with.</p>
<p>CAVEATS: First, this only counts national universities. LACs are not on the list, so I am missing some valuable choices such as Harvey Mudd. CC is a good place to learn about such worthy schools. Second, some schools that are very reputable regionally (such as Colorado School of Mines in the American West) are not as well known to the international list makers. Finally, this is intended to produce a list, not a ranking. Don’t trust these scores as measures of quality - just being on the list indicates excellence.</p>
haha</p>