My College List (eeekkk)

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hi! I am so excited and scared to apply for colleges this year. I have his huge list of colleges that I am interested in. A lot of these schools are "reach" for me, but I am going to try anyway and see what happens (who knows, right?). I do have two safety schools that I am for sure getting into (UBC and Toronto). But I feel ridiculous for applying to so many reach schools!!! I am interested in Economics, Psychology, and International Relations. Can you guys help me narrow down my list to about 10-15? Thanks! :D</p>

<p>Brown
Dartmouth
Amherst
Williams
Swarthmore
Vanderbilt
Washington University in St. Louis
New York University
George Washington University
Cornell
University of Rochester
Emory
Case Western
Grinnell College
Boston University
Boston College
Middlebury College
University of Chicago
Wesleyan University
Colgate University
University of Washington in Seattle</p>

<h2>UC's</h2>

<p>University of British Columbia
University of Tronto</p>

2

<p>New York University
University of Chicago
Boston University
University of California(s)
University of Washington- Seattle</p>

<p>Those are a few good schools base off your list.</p>

3

<p>think about what kind of college environment you want. do you want it to be located in a city or do you want it to be rural? lots of students, or only a few thousand. your list is all over the place. you can narrow it down to the schools that fit what you want, and you should also try to find the ones that are strongest in your area of interest. do a little research.</p>

4

<p>Hmmm... Well I am from Seoul, South Korea (a huge city that has 20 million people). But I am living in Winnipeg, Canada right now (a tiny city in the middle of nowhere which has less than 500,000 people). I don't mind where my college is located or the size of the student body.... but I guess I will do some research.</p>

<p>Do you think it will be difficult for me to apply to ALL of these schools?</p>

5

<p>Well, what do you want from a school, outside of the academics? What kind of campus, location, size, atmosphere? Right now you have everything from large, campusless uni’s in big cities (NYU, GW) to small LACs in rural areas (Grinnell, Williams). You have preppy-ish schools with large Greek scenes (Vandy) and schools known for their quirkiness and lack of Greeks (UChicago, Swarthmore, etc).</p>

<p>So, here are some question to ask yourself:</p>

<p>City/suburban/rural/town?
Strong sense of campus community, or something more integrated into a city?
Small/medium/large student body?
Preppy/Quirky/Artsy/Intellectual/mix? (not that all of these are mutually exclusive)
Liberal/Conservative/moderate/mix?
Politically active or no?
Big sports scene?
Big arts scene?
Greeks? No Greeks?
What do you want from your social life (lots of big parties, lots of small ones, lots of things to do other than party, etc)?
What kind of activities are you sure you want to participate in?
What kind of fin aid or merit aid do you need?
Do you care about the South Korean, Asian, or international population/community?
What kind of weather do you want? What kind of weather do you hate?</p>

<p>You might honestly not care about some of these questions. Some people really could see themselves anywhere from totally rural to a city, or at both a huge school and a tiny one. But you must have some preferences, and those will help you narrow down your list, especially because you’ve chosen majors that will be pretty strong at most schools (except maybe IR), so you should really be focusing on the other things for narrowing the list down.</p>

<p>ETA: rhov beat me to it! but hopefully my questions will help you figure out where your preferances lie. And yes, it would be very hard (and expensive) to apply to all of these schools.</p>

6

<p>Thank you very much, Weskid, for your help! It's soo hard tho! </p>

<p>How did you do your research when you were a senior?</p>

7

<p>Uh, which colleges on my list should i keep for safety?</p>

8

<p>the ones you know you can get into and wouldn't mind going to if you can't get into any others.</p>

9

<p>--For us to know what kind of college is a safety, we'd have to know your stats. But as rhov said, a saftey should be a college you a) Are certain you could get into, b) are certain you will be able to pay for, and c) would be happy to go to.</p>

<p>--When I was a jr/sr, I got a bunch of college guide books with quotes from students (I also used the Princeton review site), and then I read about a lot of different colleges. From that, I could get a sense of which colleges sounded appealing to me in terms of environment. Visiting colleges also helped a lot, though that might be hard for you. But even without visiting, I could basically figure out that I wanted a smaller school with quirky students, small to no Greek scene, strong in the arts — I knew this just by thinking about myself and what I liked. </p>

<p>It might help you to think about what you “ideal” college would be like; that is, if you could make up a college to go to, what would it be? Of course, no college is going to be 100% fitting to that ideal, but if your ideal college would be large, suburban, and preppy, that gives you a different set of criteria to look for in colleges than if it were small, in a city, and artsy.</p>

<p>If you took my list of questions and actually answered them for us (you can say "I don't care" if you don't care), then we could help you more. Like, literally fill this out for us:</p>

<p>Preferred location:
Preferred kind of campus:
Preferred size:
Preferred “feel” (preppy, quirky, etc):
Preferred political leaning:
Preferred level of political activism:
Preferred type of sports scene:
Preferred type of arts scene:
Preferred size of Greek life:
Preferred kind of party life:
Preferred available activities:
Preferred international or Asian community:
Preferred weather:
What kind of aid do you need: </p>

<p>And some others I didn't think of before:
Preferred level of diversity:
Preferred level of people living on campus:
Preferred kinds of on campus living (all dorms vs. program houses and apartments, etc):</p>

<p>And add anything else you might really want (or really not want) in a school.</p>

10

<p>I would recommend that you try grouping things a bit by level of difficulty of admissions and then choosing a few schools out of each of the groups. That way you can try to end up with a more balanced, as well as a smaller, list. You don't list your stats, so these schools aren't grouped in relation to whether their a reach, semi-reach, good fit, likely, or safety for you; they're grouped more generally regarding how hard they are to get into. I'm leaving off the UCs for now, because you don't specify which ones you're interested in (there is, after all, a fair amount of difference between UC-Berkeley and UC-Riverside).</p>

<p>TIER ONE
Amherst College
Brown University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Middlebury College
Swarthmore College
University of Chicago
Washington University in St. Louis
Williams College</p>

<p>*Right now, your list seems a little top-heavy. Since you don't list your stats, I don't know whether or not this top-heaviness is warranted. Basically, if you're someone who's a definite candidate at these schools, it makes sense to have a fair amount of them on here... you probably won't get into all of them, but you'll have a chance of getting into a few. If, however, they're all pretty big reaches for you, I would recommend you cut down more of them. Some ideas on how to do this...</p>

<p>First of all, you have an interesting mix of small LACs and larger universities on here. This is fine, but I think you should really think about what sort of environment you'll do best in. Is having professors who you'll easily be able to get to know important to you? If so, Amherst, Middlebury, Swarthmore, and Williams are the schools for you. If you are, however, more interested in going to school in a big environment, you should pay more attention to Cornell, WashU, and University of Chicago. I would say that Brown and Dartmouth could work equally well for both of these two categories... they're more moderate in size. </p>

<p>In addition, you should think about the surrounding environment you'd like to be in. If you want an urban city-scene with lots to do off-campus as well as on, Brown, WashU, and University of Chicago are your best picks. On the other hand, if you want a very rural environment, Cornell, Dartmouth, Middlebury, and Williams are your best bets. Swarthmore and Amherst both offer a bit of both: Amherst because of its quaint town and five college consortium and Swarthmore because of its proximity to Philadelphia but suburban location.</p>

<p>Lastly, be sure to look into whether all of the schools on your list actually have the academic programs you're interested in. After all, it doesn't make sense to go to a school that lacks one of the things you're most interested in studying. All of your schools offer Economics and Psychology; however, I don't believe that Amherst College, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Swarthmore College, and Williams College have International Relations. Thus, if you don't want to drop schools from your list based on surroundings or environment, I would recommend you consider this as a way of dropping schools.* </p>

<p>TIER TWO
Boston College
Colgate University
Emory University
Vanderbilt University
Wesleyan University</p>

<p>Once again, this part of your list has a mix of environments on it. BC, Vanderbilt, and Emory are all city schools, while Wesleyan is in a suburban environment, and Colgate is very rural. In addition, Wesleyan and Colgate are small, while Emory, Vanderbilt, and BC are all mid-sized. You should be able to drop at least a couple of schools from this section of your list depending on what environment you decide will be the best one for you to attend school in. Lastly, you have the same issue as with Tier One in that some of the schools on your list do not have an International Relations major: Boston College, Vanderbilt, and Wesleyan.</p>

<p>TIER THREE
George Washington University
Grinnell College
New York University
University of Rochester</p>

<p>This is going to get repetitive, but once again, there's a large variety on this list: GWU & NYU are both large schools heavily embedded in large cities, Grinnell is a small rural school, and URochester is a medium-sized suburban university in proximity to a large city. In addition to this, University of Rochester and Grinnell College both lack an International Studies major.</p>

<p>TIER FOUR
Boston University
Case Western Reserve University
University of Washington in Seattle</p>

<p>This list is a bit more homogenous than the other Tiers... all three schools have a relatively urban setting and are all universities; however, Case Western is a good deal smaller than BU and University of Washington. Case Western is also a school that is much more well-known for its science and engineering programs than its humanities majors... it's much closer to a scientific institute than any of the schools on your list. For this reason, I would recommend that you drop Case from your list. That being said, as long as a large, urban environment isn't a turn-off for you, I would say that you should keep University of Washington and BU.</p>

11

<p>^^ It's true that Wes doesn't have a IR major, but it does have an IR concentration in the gov department, as well as an IR certificate (minor). But yeah, presence of an IR program might be another way to make decisions, assuming IR is very important to you</p>

12

<p>WOAH. Littleathiest, THANK YOU SO MUCH! You helped me tons!!!!!</p>

13

<p>Thank you so much guys. I should pay you all! : D</p>