Hi everyone,
I am a junior in high school and I made a list of colleges. It has 35 colleges and they are all completely different. They are all over the country, some are private and expensive and others are public and inexpensive, and some are small liberal art schools while others are huge state schools. Obviously I can’t visit all these school, so how do know what I want in a school? I know I don’t want to go in state just because there aren’t really any schools in my state that I like. Other than that I have no idea where in the country I want to go to school at. I could honestly see myself anywhere. I want to major in political science, international relations, or economics (not completely sure yet) so I was just wondering if there was any areas in particular that have especially good school/jobs/internships.
Thanks to everyone that takes the time to help me!
Is money an issue? What can you afford?
Money is slightly an issue. I come from a white middle class family so probably won’t get much financial aid. However I am going to for rotc scholarships so if I get a scholarship, money won’t be as much of an issue. That’s kind of why I’m looking at expensive and inexpensive schools. If I don’t get a scholarship then I’ll just have to hope that loans, grants, and whatever financial aid I can get will get me through.
Start by talking to your parents about what they will contribute.
Then run the net price calculator on each college of interest to see if it will be affordable on need-based financial aid. If a college is not, then check if merit scholarships will make it affordable. If you need scholarships (merit or ROTC) to afford the college, then the reach/match/safety assessment must be made on the scholarship, not admission.
Do not write off your in-state public universities so quickly, because they may include some more affordable options.
If you want to be a military officer, consider also the academies of the branch(es) of interest.
Rank them according to, oh, 5-10 things you think are important. Two of those should be Cost (run NPC!) and Available Majors (you want a school with multiple majors you like or might like, since you may change your mind or not be able to get into your top choice).
Other ideas:
- Class sizes
- Environment (campus look/convenience/size, surrounding wilderness or city/town, etc.)
- Location/weather
- Grad rate (4-year and/or 6-year)
- Social vibe (try to read up on the Greek/party scene, sports fandom, activism, clubs, and things to do around town/city)
- Ease of changing majors (this will require some digging)
- Dorms/food
- Curricular style
- Academic calendar
- Acceptance rate and average GPA/test scores (to help you sort reach/match/safety)
Once you have evaluated them according to your formula, pick a few reaches, a few matches, and at least one safety – 7 schools. Or 5, 10, however many apps you have the time and money for. The one rule is, you must have at least one safety.
In addition to being a college where your admission is assured, it must be a college that you like and where affordability is assured.
Start to visit schools at some point to determine what you want in a school. After one or two, you’ll start to see what you’re looking for in terms of size, location, vibe… that will knock some off your list.
Do all of the schools on the list have ROTC programs either on campus or nearby? If not, then that could be a way to winnow down the list. And even if you do not like your in-state options, consider visiting them or schools in nearby states just to get a feel for different types of school environments (university versus LAC, size, urban/rural, campus layout, types of facilities, etc.) Consider them representative samples of other colleges.
Running the net price calculator is a good idea, as one poster suggests—at some point in your search you MUST do that before you make any firm decisions.
My suggestion otherwise to start the winnowing process is to go through your list and divide them into categories of safety, match, and reach—being pessimistic rather than optimistic when doing so. You can do that by using a college book or the “common data sets” available online for most colleges. Look at the test scores and GPAs for the average enrolled student at these schools, and compare them to your own statistics. Do not give yourself credit for the 4.0 you expect to make between now and next year, or for the bump you plan to get the next time you take the ACT! Also research which—if any—of the schools on your list have automatic admission thresholds (such as automatic admission if you have a 3.0 and a 25 ACT, or something like that, which some public schools will).
A school is a “safety” if either (1) it has automatic admission requirements and you meet those requirements, or (2) it has competitive admission but your stats are well above the 75th percentile for enrolled students (eg, the 25/75 percentile range for ACT is 23/29 and your ACT is like a 31+ not just a 29) AND the overall acceptance rate for applicants is north of 50%. A school will also need to be affordable (by running the net price calculator) to be considered a safety school.
A school is a “match” if it has competitive admissions and (1) your stats fall in between the 25/75the percentiles for admitted students, AND (2) it has an overall acceptance rate above 30% or so. Many people differentiate among “high” and “low” matches as well, depending on where you fall in the statistical range; people sometimes will call a school a “safety” if your stats are above the 75th percentile, but only if the acceptance rate is relatively high (certainly above 50% and really more like 75%). I personally prefer using a very narrow definition of “safety” (like that in my previous paragraph) so as to truly be safe and not overestimate chances of admission to a given school, and instead call a school a “high match” if you are at the 75th percentile and the school has a 30-50% acceptance rate. NO SCHOOL WITH AN ACCEPTANCE RATE BELOW 25-30% SHOULD EVER BE CONSIDERED A MATCH. It is just not wise to consider schools this competitive as matches.
You are then left categorizing the rest of the schools as “reaches”—ones where either your stats are at or below the 25th percentile and those with sub-25% acceptance rates. To reiterate, even if your stats are safely within the 25/75th percentile, if the school has a low acceptance rate it usually means that they get quite a few applicants with those same test scores and grades, and they are likely making admission decisions as much on the basis of essays, recommendations, and other factors. Further, when thinking about schools with 10% or lower acceptance rates (your top10-20 schools with 30,000 applicants), you are always a “reach” even if you have a 4.0 and a 36 ACT—they turn down quite a few people with perfect stats every year, for they are looking for more than that.
All that being said, now go through your list of 35 schools and put them into these 3 (or slightly more) buckets based on this likelihood of admission. How does your list divide up? Do you have no safeties, 3 matches, and 32 reaches? Your list, even at this stage, should be balanced. It does you no good at this stage to agonize over whether you prefer Yale to Stanford, if you haven’t found a safety or two you are satisfied with or any matches (that represent the more likely school you will attend). Seriously, this is where many kids blow it in the admissions process—spending far too much time splitting hairs among top 10 schools when they do not have any more realistic plans in place in case the dream schools don’t work out. I have a friend right now whose senior son insisted on a list of 7 Ivies and similar, plus the state flagship (which he hates but begrudgingly agreed to apply to). I am willing to bet good money his kid ends up at that flagship, because although he has perfect grades and a very good test score, that is all he has going for him, and the odds he gets in to one of these sub-10% schools is obviously quite low.
Last, finances are as important as anything else in the process. You must run the pricing for any school you apply to. Even a safety is not a safety if you can not afford it—the biggest problem area here is students who pick an out of state public school as their safety. Public schools quite often are stingy on financial aid to non-residents, and too many naive applicants assume that because the school has a high acceptance rate and they have great stats that this means that school will give them enough money to attend. Don’t count on it. Usually your best safeties are your state’s flagship university or similar, or perhaps an out of state school with a full scholarship that has defined criteria for being awarded it.
For my youngest, her criteria was: 1-2 hours from home, not huge, not in a city, where she wasn’tthe biggest fish in the pond but the pond was of good quality.
Colleges far away have the following issues:
- if public, the OOS cost is more
- Travel costs
- Travel time/inconvienence
- If you need help, farther away from your parents. My youngest got a kidney infection this year and I was easily able to travel to stay with her in the hospital.
What are your criteria?
I think that there are two places to start.
One, as @ucbalumnus said, is to figure out your budget, run the NPC on all of the schools on your list, and see which are likely to be affordable. Most students need to restrict their choices considerably based on budget.
The other thing to do now is to start visiting schools. By visiting a few you can begin to get some sense of what you might want or not want, and this whole college search thing will begin to feel more real. You probably want to first visit schools that are relatively near where you live, if only because you don’t need to travel too far to do the visit before you narrow down what you are looking for. Also, when touring schools you can try to set up meetings with professors and/or get to sit in on a few classes.
What state are your from? I wouldn’t rule out your state schools too quickly. A lot of students want to go out of state because their in-state universities seem boring. However, in-state schools are often a much better deal and are usually very good for most students. Even if your in-state school is only a few minutes from your house, if you live on campus then it will feel like a completely different world compared to living at home with your parents.
I live in Illinois and I’ve looked at U of I Champaign but you’re exactly right, part of the reason I don’t want to go there is because it does seem boring. Both of my parents went there and it has just never appealed to me. Also, in-state tuition in Illinois isn’t too great.
It is true that IL public universities are not great in-state deals compared to what students in other states may find from their in-state public universities. However, you should not rule them out in the first cut, but consider them with all other schools, considering all factors including net price.
Here is how you narrow it down
- Cost. Research scholarships and give automatic priority to schools potentially offering scholarships. Out of state flagship schools cost 2-3 times more than in-state schools, and offer no additional benefits. Unless you’re being offered a tuition waiver or scholarship, financial aid favors residents, which means that the nonresident gap has to be covered by your parents or co-signed private loans. Those loans are a bad idea and could potentially sabotage your career. Unless you can get a tuition waiver or a scholarship, get them off your list, otherwise they can set you up for failure. Southern schools like Alabama, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Auburn and LSU offer the best nonresident scholarships.
Select your favorite private schools, get your parent’s tax returns and run the the net price calculator. Find out how much financial aid they offer. If it requires you to have student loan debt greater than 27k over 4 years, take it off your list. The more elite the school, the more generous they tend to be, but the harder they are to get into.
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Major. You should never go into a university directionless. Getting into school is only half the battle. In the big schools, employable majors tend to be highly competitive and they’re not very forgiving with major changes unless you can maintain a near 4.0, which is not realistic for just about anyone. Private schools tend to be less competitive with majors, but majors have limited choices. Gone are the days when you can switch majors by just signing a few forms. Even less competitive schools are finding that they have to be more selective because of space. Look at your strengths and ambitions then research majors and potential occupations that are a good match. This is going to require some soul searching and expect it to take time. If you just don’t know, then it’s much better to just go to a community college. This will allow you take your generals at a fraction of the cost and see if your grades are competitive enough to major in what you want at a flagship school.
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Choose about a dozen or so schools. Google admissions stats for each school. You need a small list of reach schools. Harvard, MIT, etc are always a reach no matter how good your stats are.
You need a list of target schools, where you’re more/less right about average, but still a possibility of decline.
Then you need a list of safety schools. Be sure a safety school is REALLY a safety school. This means a school you like that you KNOW you’ll get into, it’s within a good budget and you’ll be able to major in what you want.
@BooBooBear : wow, that’s an awesome post and I hope you can cut and paste it many times in threads to come. 
I usually mention those things (liking it/fit and affordability). Thanks for covering my tail this time.
And it goes for every app, not just the safety(-ies).
i, perhaps, am reiterating what others have said on this thread, but you may be surprised by how size, location, cost, and availability of a major can help narrow down a list. i, like you, struggled to narrow down my own list (though it wasn’t as large as yours), but i decided to look into those four things specifically, then i moved on to “fit.”
also, geographical diversity can sometimes be a factor when looking at your chances at universities. for example, i didn’t apply to davidson college because i felt disadvantaged because i’m from a southern state right next door to north carolina. it may have been a silly reason not to apply, but i did look into things like that to help me narrow down my list even more. i’ve been through the process twice now (i’m a gap year student), so i have a tiny bit of wisdom/guidance to share if you ever need it. (though, i doubt my wisdom is as helpful as some of these fine people’s above me!)
Visit schools close by that have the same size of look of some of the colleges you’re looking at. There are definitely virtual tours of schools, however, you don’t really know until you walk onto a campus. Also look at costs and if they have intended major.
Certain key things are location (urban vs. rural), money, etc. Also think of the selectivity of the colleges you are applying to.