<p>NYJeff06: I am going to approach your request as if you were my child. Hope that is ok with you.</p>
<p>1) what is your preference as to the size of the student body? Have you a desire to be known to your fellow students or part of a large body where you will have some connection with small groups, but difficult for you to know the large mass of students? (This has nothing to do with size of individual classes)</p>
<p>2) Do you prefer large lecture hall type classes with TA's monitoring smaller groups, or would you prefer small classes with the Professor teaching all class sessions and available (within reason) to you and the other students?</p>
<p>3) Do you need to be in or close to a major or large city? Would you prefer to be in a rural type setting, or away from the city but able to reach it within 1 or 2 hours on weekends?</p>
<p>4) Do you want to join a Frat or would you rather be in a non frat school?</p>
<p>5) If they have the money saved, do you undestand what amount of $$$, we your parents are willing and able to spend directly for your education on a yearly basis.</p>
<p>Pause: At this point, no school has been mentioned because until you have reasonably thought of the above elements, any school that does not fit into the projection of your current desires as to setting, type school, classes etc is irrelevent.</p>
<p>Now: If you have not visited schools in the settings mentioned above, then you should do this:</p>
<p>6) ask your parent to take you to visit various campus, just to gauge the settings of the varied sized schools and their general tone/setting/student body.</p>
<p>7) Spring break (April or March) is a great time to just get acquinted with the college setting. </p>
<p>However lets discuss your original list:</p>
<p>Penn (Philly), Brown (Providence) G'town (DC), Wash U(St Louis), Emory (Atlanta).</p>
<p>These schools are located in rather large city settings; Wash U - (where one of my sons graduated), is on the other side of a large city park from St LOuis proper, the rest are in the city. Penn is close to the downtown section, right next street over from Drexel. </p>
<p>Is this the type setting you would be comfortable in for four years? UM and UW are massively large Universiies (where you would be paying out of state tuition), located in the middle of their states (Lansing and Madison).</p>
<p>Northwestern is in a northern suburb of Chicago with a rather large and spread out campus and Cornell is a very hilly and Largest of all Ivies(with a state University component, and actually has two campus upper and lower and some Frats has two houses one for each campus.</p>
<p>8) Since you live in LI. Get in the car and drive into NJ and visit Princeton, take a tour and get the feeling of an Ivy campus with about 5000 students, after lunch drive into Philly (about 1 hour) and visit Penn, take a tour and view.</p>
<p>9) Drive down towards DC and stop overnight in Laurel (Route 1) in the morning visit U of Maryland (on rt 1) tour and see what a large state Univ feels like (comparible setting to UM and UW although the surrounding area is not as nice IMO. Before Lunch head into DC and visit G'Town for lunch on M Street and after lunch tour the campus.</p>
<p>Now you will have seen two on yoiur list plus a state univ and a smaller IVY institution. </p>
<p>You could then drive back north to Philly and the next day visit Haverford, which is located in the western subs of Philly (it is about 1500 students next door(1 mile) to Bryn Mawr (an all girls college of about 1500+), these two schools have comingled their curriculum so that the student body is really about 3000. Get a view on what a Liberal Arts setting with smaller class sizes and close Professor/student interaction. Take a tour and ask questions</p>
<p>Head north on the Penn Pike and go visit Lafayette in Easton (2000 students, very preppy and big on Frats (my two oldest sons went here). ALternately, you could go to Lancaster and visit Franklin and Marshall or up to Carliyle(SP) to visit Dickinson. Any of these three would give you a good impression of this type of school.</p>
<p>10) After this type of trip, you wil have seen a variety of settings (small town, big city, larger school,smaller school, frats or not (Haverford) and you should have a better understanding of what setting is best for you.</p>
<p>Comment: The reason IMO for so many transfers is the simple fact that the student did not know what he/she wanted the college environment/setting to be, was not aware of the type of students that attended, did not understand the teaching setup (Prof/TA etc) was totally unaware of their own personal comfort zone etc.</p>
<p>Remember this trip is only to give you the college setting and environment.</p>
<p>Weather (ice snow rain sun beaches mountains etc) could be of concern to you, that is IMO a minor item, but what say you.</p>
<p>The selection of your college is the most important decision next to your selection of a spouse, that you will make in the next 10 to 15 years of your life. Therefore, you should seek as much awareness of yourself and what is available in the multitude of colleges/universities before you create a list of possibles. That is easy, learning the awareness is harder, much harder, but IMO all important.</p>