<p>I know it’s so overwhelming at this point, and you’re doing the right thing by coming asking questions! You need to start by figuring out a few ways to narrow your search a little bit, so it’s not just a huge and overwhelming field of colleges.</p>
<p>I agree with dustypig. This fall, do some casual college visits to a wide variety of schools. Try to visit when school is in session (you can look up the college’s break schedules on their web sites. If you visit when students are away you really won’t get a good idea of the vibe of the school.) I personally feel as though this is important enough to take a day off school, if needed (just make sure you make up the work!)</p>
<p>This will help you get a sense of what appeals to you and where you can see yourself. For instance, prior to these trips, my daughter was sure she wanted to go to school in a big city. She quickly realized the she actually wanted a small liberal arts college with a traditional campus in a rural or suburban location: a big deal since it knocked a lot of schools she’d been vaguely considering, like NYU, Barnard, Northeastern and other Boston colleges, etc off her list… and made us refocus our search on the smaller LACs (liberal arts colleges).</p>
<p>Once you have a few variables defined (perhaps size, geographic location, urban/rural, Greek life or no) you can use a matching program like College Confidential’s Supermatch or the College Board’s Big Future web site (which we used to great effect. I recommend you open an account there.) You can enter in your projected GPA and test scores and further narrow your search that way. College Board lets you make a “My Colleges” list. You can look at a lot of information about the schools, such as what majors are available, and what percentage of students are majoring in broad categories like business, performing/fine arts, social sciences, etc. You can see what the GPA and SAT/ACT score ranges are for the schools, and start to get a sense of whether that school would be, academically at least, a safety, match, or reach school for you. You want to have a balance.</p>
<p>An EXTREMELY important step is figuring out whether you can afford the schools. This is a very good way to narrow your list. But its confusing, too. You can’t just look at the published cost of tuition and room and board. You REALLY need to run the Net Price Calculators (people call them NPCs) for each school. It’s easy to do from the College Board site if you have an account set up, you just enter the information once and it automatically fills in for subsequent schools you check. You will need your parents help for this, since you need information from their tax return and perhaps about their assets and investments. Each school will give you a Net Price, that is, what your family is going to need to come up with in order to attend. Schools may award you some need-based aid (grants from the college itself) based on the info. Some may figure merit-based aid (scholarships from the college itself) into the NPC as well. They should show, at the end, how much in work-study and federal student loans they expect you to take out, and then give a figure that your family needs to come up with in addition (either from savings and income, or by taking out higher-interest private loans.)</p>
<p>You don’t really need to decide what your major is right now, but having an idea of your interests is a good idea. Even if you chose a specific major right now, it’s likely to change over the next 2 years. So as long as you choose a school that has a wide variety of offerings that suit your interests, I think you should be fine. </p>
<p>Good luck!</p>