<p>Or at least explain your spreadsheet/tracker. I'm struggling with setting up a tracking spreadsheet of schools, which tracks information important to us. Such as location, whether the school has my son's sport as a varsity program, teacher:student ratio, etc. The problem is that we keep adding and adding and adding fields, so it's getting quite wide and less and less effective.</p>
<p>I thought that if I looked at (or got an explanation of) the info YOU track, it would help us focus.</p>
<p>We’re just beginning the process, and we’re trying to keep it all straight. So we’re not to the point of deciding on the schools to apply to; we just want to track “schools of interest” at this point. Does that help?</p>
<p>I set one up for my youngest last year - it did end up having a lot of columns but it worked well for us.
My columns included school name, city and state, size, date visited, date application sent, acceptance (y/n), tuition and fees, room and board, financial aid, including columns for scholarship, fa grant, state grant, loans and out of pocket cost.
I put in formulas to show the net cost (including her loans) and the out of pocket cost - cash up front. The financial part became plain as day to her.</p>
<p>We started the summer after junior year and she had a list of about 10 schools. She ended up applying to 6. You can do it with any criteria and hide columns as you go through the process. I would start with the basics and anything that is a deal breaker and go from there.</p>
<p>I have quite an epic spreadsheet where I am keep track of 22 schools. The columns are grouped into “categories” of Vital Info, Academics, Admissions and Campus Life. I also track which Princeton Review lists they end up on using a quite confusing system of acronyms. Haha.</p>
<p>The subcategories for each column are:
VITAL INFO - Name, State, # of Students
ACADEMICS - Student Prof Ratio, PR Rating/CP Grade
ADMISSION - PR Rating/Acceptance Rate, SAT Scores Mid 50% (for each category)
CAMPUS LIFE - % UG living on campus, PR Quality of Life rating, and CP grades for On/Off Campus dining and On/Off campus housing</p>
<p>I also find it very helpful to use color coding. For example, if I see that a school has a good student teacher ratio (9:01 or less was my cut off) I put that data in green for that school. If they had a particularly bad ratio (12:01 or worse) I put that data in red. Same goes for SAT scores - if I was above the mid 50, i put the score in green. Below the mid 50, it’s red. Now I can really easily see where I fall in the ranges in terms of where I might get accepted.</p>
<p>I’m glad I had one back when S2 was looking at schools. It was a very simple one but it included the school, status, cost of attending, merit/need based awards, loans offered, scholarships…and bottom line was amount WE would have to pay.</p>
<p>In each cell/box I name the school, its SAT midpt, acceptance rate. If I need any more specific info like whether or not it has ROTC or EA, etc., I refer to the spreadsheet. But, for “at a glance” purposes, this is it.</p>
<p>I’m afraid my S’s spreadsheet is very, very specific b/c he knows exactly what he wants to study. But if it will help - the catagories are:
aerospace ranking
engineering ranking
facilities
faculty
multiple areas within aerospace
courses
degrees
housing
clubs
overall impression</p>
<p>I just looked at mine - I included application fee, application due day, rolling admissions (y/n), I even included the link to the website - one click from the spreadsheet and you’re there.
If you use excel then you can put filters in or sort the data. Make it as slick or simple as you want.</p>
<p>her is mine:
School name
Application status
Login Apllication ID
Financial Aid
CSS submitted
Comm App
college code
Application*deadline
College board info
CSS-PROFILE due
Location
Need blind
Common Data set
Useful links-1,2,3
…
for those need more detail, I just right click the cell and add Hyperlink to it like Comm data set website link…</p>
<p>college name
location
tier 1,2,3
fee to apply
distance from home
rural, urban, suburban, town size etc
size of college
interview recommended?
male/female ratio
freshman retention rate
percent admitted
admissions yield
sat 75%/25%
propensity of school to offer merit aid (high, med, low)
diversity %
tuition
r & b
ea, ed, and rd deadlines
column for notes, like honors programs, etc
common app?
supplement?
student/faculty ratio
4 and 5 yr grad rates
amount of scholarship offered
terms of scholarship offered
net cost of attendance</p>
<p>And if I had found IPEDs peer analysis system before I had created it, I’d have gotten a lot filled in for me. And I’d have been in statistics heaven.</p>
<p>Here is mine:
college name
fee/free for online
sat 75%-25%
size of merit aid
essay question: hard, medium, easy, no essay
deadlines: ed, ea, rd date
US News rankings</p>
<p>I think it would be useful to also add fields (based on calculations from the scholarships offered) for projected student and parent debt. These two fields may eliminate a couple of schools without much analysis.</p>
<p>I am trying to design some a “decision-making assistant” based on the process we use for evaluating job applicants. Might be crazy to try, but here is what I am thinking:</p>
<p>1) we will ask D to list, from most important to least important, the top ten “fit factors” she is looking for in a school, the most important having a weight of 10, down to the least important having a weight of 1.</p>
<p>2) all schools that have accepted her will be scored from 0 to 10 (by D) on each of the ten fit factors</p>
<p>3) multiply 2 by the weight assigned in 1, and add together to determine a final “fit score”…</p>
<p>That is the first part…</p>
<p>The second part will be financially based - criteria to be determined, based on total COA minus any FA offered (need-based or merit), plus any caveats like minimum GPA required to keep aid, average increases in cost over the past few years for each school, etc etc. I still have to figure that out…</p>
<p>The kicker will be weighting the first and second parts before adding the scores together to get a final score. Should it be 50-50 fit to finances? or maybe more like 65-35? I think if we did a quantitative analysis like this the school coming out on top might be a little surprising to D in the end…should be interesting to do when the time comes…</p>
<p>Ours last year (I say “ours,” but it was really mine - I think S barely looked at it):</p>
<p>Columns:
College name (each was hyperlinked to the college’s website)
College visit planned (date, time, etc.)
Location
Nearest major city (that was important to S)
Type of school (private or public)
Size (# of undergrads)
Environment (urban, suburban, etc.)
Majors (did they have journalism, for example?)
Honors college info
Prestige (for whatever that’s worth)
Tuition
Room and board
Tuition + room and board before scholarships
Likely merit scholarships
Probable tuition + room and board after scholarships
SAT CR
SAT Math
SAT Writing
Application deadline
Application requirements (essays, recommendations, etc.)
Proximity to interesting places
Ease of transportation
Study abroad (journalism study abroad)
Internships
Years of language required for admission (this was an issue for him)
SAT scores sent
ACT scores sent
Housing situation
Faculty:student ratio
Points to ponder</p>
<p>I also put the safeties in green, the matches in yellow, and the reaches in red (pink).</p>
<p>Color coding is the best suggestion yet! I’m going to take a lot of these and press forward. It’s just seemed so unwieldy. I gotta just do it. I will just put everything in and hide or filter out the stuff that’s not important at the moment, as suggested. </p>
<p>From experience with Excel, though, I have learned to make a master list of the data on a separate sheet than the one that I do the filtering and sorting on. Invariably, I screw up the data and it becomes misaligned or otherwise compromised, and I need to revert back to the master version.</p>
too much non numerical data for a spreadsheet</p>