<p>Hey everyone so can you guys tell me what your criteria for choosing colleges has been?</p>
<p>I don't know what I want besides diversity and 3000+ students with a big campus but maybe seeing the criteria that you guys have set for your collee searches will help me narrow down my choices.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Geographic area of the country, city vs rural, liberal arts focus or professional schools too (business, engineering, nursing)? Give us more information to work with-</p>
<p>If you go to the college-finder wizard on this site or College Board, it will walk you through a list of choices. That would probably be more useful.</p>
<p>My son looked for small schools with high SAT math scores, guaranteed housing for at least three years, significant merit or need-based aid, and a big CS major (many small colleges have no CS major or not a big one). He didn’t care about fraternities, football, or location.</p>
<p>Try using Naviance or whatever system your school uses to see what kinds of colleges students from your school with your stats have gotten into as a starting point. From there, you can try narrowing it down by looking for schools that have a strong program in your prospective major, have extracurricular activities you’re interested in (for example, if you like playing basketball as a hobby, look for schools that offer that as something apart from the regular college basketball team, or if you like debate, look for schools with a debate team), have an atmosphere that appeals to you (strong Greek life presence, for example, or lack thereof), and are in a location you like (perhaps you prefer an urban setting over a rural one, for instance).</p>
<p>3000 is a somewhat unfortunate cut-off because it excludes almost every liberal arts college but just barely. Once you refine your criteria more you might want to at least visit a few places in the 2300 - 2600 range (Middlebury, Wesleyan for example) to compare those with the larger places. Other factors people seem to consider are artsy vs. preppy, sense that the place is very intellectual or not, importance of sports, availability of business, engineering and other pre-professional majors.</p>
<p>Here are some I’ve been going by, not in any order…</p>
<p>Location
Cost
Major
Campus Life
Campus City</p>
<p>Jazzii -</p>
<p>Have you talked with your parents about how they expect you to pay for your education? Once you have a budget estimate, usually that thins the list of potential colleges and universities down pretty quickly.</p>