<p>I cannot for the life of me figure out what I want in a college. I'm not the most decisive person ever.</p>
<p>Our career center lady has given me all of those wonderful websites to help figure out what college is for you. Those are great if you actually know what you want, but I don't.</p>
<p>-I've lived in a town of 10,000 my entire life. I don't know if I'd enjoy a big city or not, and I do enjoy it here.
-I kind of want to go far away, but it's not a big deal. I don't really care if I stay in-state or not.
-I'm not sure how many kids I want there. Probably 1,000-10,000 (but maybe 20,000?). That's kind of a big range though.
-I know I want a somewhat selective school, but I don't really know how selective.
-I want something fairly north, but that's a pretty broad area. I'm not a hot-weather person. I'd also like a cross-country/nordic ski team, even if I'm not on it, but that's not necessary.
-I've never had a problem with school food, so that doesn't really matter.</p>
<p>Where did everyone else start?</p>
<p>I think you have a good start of your preferences. It looks like you'd want a school in a nice college town. 1 to 10 thousand students means you want a small to mid-size university. The selectivity partly depends on your stats. You can use <a href="http://www.collegeboard.com%5B/url%5D">www.collegeboard.com</a> and look up schools that match your stats, but make sure you apply to schools that you could easily get into and schools that it will be really tough to get in to. I think if you did the College search at that website, you could get a good start.</p>
<p>Go to: <a href="http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/adv_typeofschool.jsp%5B/url%5D">http://apps.collegeboard.com/search/adv_typeofschool.jsp</a></p>
<p>What state do you live in now?</p>
<p>For the indecisive, usually the College of William OR Mary is good, but you need to provide a little more info on your grades, test scores, probable major, and where you live before you'll get any good feedback. My guess is that if you're from a small town, a college IN a big city would be a little overwhelming, but a rural college, a college in a smaller city, or a college NEAR a big city would be fine.</p>
<p>the problem with the questions that people normally ask about selecting a school can be meaningless to one particular person, and then just force you to make choices/distinctions based on negligable aspects of a college.<br>
so... think about your highschool... what do you like about your school... what would you like to change?
now, think about a fictional world in which you get to design your ideal college. what aspects of said college pop out to you first? Do you say: "I am going to make a huge university in a big city where lots is going on" or "a beautiful campus" or "small and laid back with uber accessible prof.s"
After that, you know what you want, and people can help you find which schools match your dream.</p>
<p>I have 3 suggestions. First, start doing some visits to colleges of various types in your area such as rural, urban, small, large, etc. Try to go next fall when school is in session because you'll want to get a feel of what the place is like with students (and talk to some in the cafeteria, wandering around, etc).</p>
<p>Second, get one of those "insider" type college books. Not for the schools listed in them, but to get an idea of what students say they like/dislike about their schools. Since you haven't been a college student before you might not be aware of some of the issues. For example you may read students say advising is non-existent at their school and this will prompt you to find out more about what advisors do if you don't know, and also to think about whether this is important to you or not. Same with class size, study abroad options, availability of dorms, a greek system, existence of seminars, popularity of intramural sports, and on and on. Not everything will matter, and discovering what does and does not matter is important in its own right. </p>
<p>Third, talk to people you know who are in college and pick their brains. You don't need to settle everything in advance about what you want, and it's ok to change your mind later. Sometimes people who are indecisive are closet perfectionists, and they don't want to make a choice because it might later turn out to be wrong so they waffle. I don't know if this is you, just thought I'd throw it out. Anyway, something else you can do to kill time this summer is read more about colleges themselves; for example, almost all college newspapers are online these days so you can read back issues and get a sense of what is important to kids on various campuses. You can also go to livejournal and search on "interests" for various colleges.</p>