What things would make you immediately cross a school off your list?

College Search & Selection
101

<ol>
<li>Had to have a fencing program (and that’s why I’m excited to be attending Ohio State next year! Coach Nazlymov has an amazing program. Even though I’m not a starter, I know that I will improve vastly.)</li>
<li>Had to have a Russian minor. Surprisingly, many schools didn’t offer Russian.</li>
<li>Had to be in a city.</li>
</ol>

<p>tOSU fit all those things.</p>

102

<ol>
<li>Poor academics</li>
<li>Religious association</li>
<li>Poor quality campus</li>
<li>Lack of diversity</li>
<li>Too big or too small</li>
</ol>

103

<p>To narrow it down my sons’s TOP priorities w/o exceptions were:

  1. Must have his major & minor (a decent well established program)
  2. Must be a ROTC host school
  3. Must have a strong study abroad program
  4. Must have traditions and school spirit
  5. Must have a collegiate look (no windowless cinder block bldgs)
  6. Not an activist or uber liberal environment</p>

<p>We then added the following:
7. Good balance between academics and social life (not cut-throat)
8. Close male/female ratio
9. Eastern or Southern states only (we’re in Florida)
10. Not a commuter school or second tier</p>

<p>Once accepted it will come down to overall cost (FinAid, living expenses, etc.)</p>

104

<ol>
<li>all female </li>
<li>unsafe </li>
<li>too big/too small </li>
<li>heavy religious influence </li>
<li>serious lack of racial diversity</li>
</ol>

105

<ol>
<li>cost</li>
<li>very cutthroat environment</li>
<li>low graduation rate</li>
<li>lack of desired major</li>
</ol>

106

<p>haha, this is easy. Locations and employment rate after graduating.</p>

107

<p>I just finished going through a list of all colleges in my home state and narrowing it down to the ones I’m willing to attend. I’m willing to go to school in a different state but I’d rather stay closer to home and pay resident tuition if I go to a public school.</p>

<p>My first requirement was that they offer degrees in both computer science and math. (I’ll have to think about accreditation later since CS is a relatively new field and accreditation for it isn’t the same as accreditation for any other kind of engineering.)</p>

<p>Then I looked through the catalogs and eliminated colleges with severely lacking course selections. Some omit things like complex analysis, abstract algebra, number theory, etc. that no department respectful of math would fail to offer to teach. In CS, a big red flag is a lack of classes devoted to theoretical topics like computability theory.</p>