Starting the search for the perfect college is daunting to say the least. As student who just finished her first year of college, I know this personally was really overwhelming. I mean how the heck do you pick where you want to go? Everyone always tells you how great college will be and how important is to go to one, but they don’t actually tell you how to pick the right one. Being me, I procrastinated and then completely freaked out going a bit crazy with my search, as in a five page spreadsheet rating colleges with letter, color and number grades, yeah I went way overboard. So if you don’t feel like having a panic attack senior year, I have made a list, not a spreadsheet I promise!, of websites that were helpful to me and of qualities you might think to look for in a college.
1. What size do you want?
Do you like sitting in lecture halls with a hundred other students, or is a smaller, more personal, discussion based class more your thing? Do you want a five minute walk across campus or one maybe needing to take a bus to get to your next class?
2. Far, far away or close to home?
When I first started looking for colleges, I wanted as far from the Midwest and its cold winter weather as possible. I looked at and fell in love with a few colleges in states like Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky. Then, we started visiting those colleges and I realized just how far apart Iowa and the Smoky Mountains in Tn really were. Did I want a twelve hour drive home? Did I want to be able to come home some weekends and for birthdays and Thanksgiving? Would I get homesick away from my family and pets? I thought about it, looked at some closer colleges and found the perfect one for me just an hour and a half away (there were a lot of “I told you so’s” coming from my parents.
3. What activities do you want to be in?
Do you want to be really involved on campus or could you not care less that they happen to have an origami club? Do you want to be in intramural sports? Greek life? Choir? Drama? Volunteer work? Think about what you really would like to do in college and make a list, most colleges have a school club page with descriptions for you to browse. Who knows you might find something new!
4. "What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Yeah I know that you get asked this hundreds of times, especially when you’re in high school, and most of us still don’t have a clue when we reach our senior year, but you might have a general or even vague idea. Look at what you’re interested in and then see if a college offers any of those things. I have no clue what career I want to have but I have a list of things that I find interesting and enjoy (writing, fashion, languages, traveling, etc.) and I checked to make sure colleges I was thinking about had majors or at least classes in those subjects. Some colleges even have a “design your own major” program where if there isn’t a set major for what you’re interested in, say being both a nurse and a pastry chef, and you can figure out a plan to turn that into a career, they will let you smoosh the two together with the help of an academic adviser.
5. Location, location, location.
Along with the distance from home, the area your school is in might be a factor to consider. Do you care if your college is in the middle of nowhere but might have great on campus activities? Do you want to be in a social mecca, a place where you are right in the midst of things like theaters, museums, intern opportunities, your no fat double shot mocha latte, and clubs? A website that will tell you the size of the city or town your college is in, and it’s proximity to bigger cities is the College Board site. You might want to type in a college where you know the size of the town personally to see how the site judge's size though. One college I was looking at said it was a small city, but when I compared it to a nearby town with a college that I thought was pretty big, it was actually much larger than it seemed. Niche has student given ratings of the local areas surrounding colleges as well. Another thing to look at, is the crime rate in the city and the safety of the area you’ll be in. One college was in my top three picks, but we visited the town and the crime rate was crazy high and the whole area was just abandoned and sketchy looking.
6. Public or private?
This can depend on your personality as well as the atmosphere you are looking for. Do you want to be one of 30,000 or one of 2,000? Or somewhere in between? Do you want to have smaller classes, where you can have more one on one and relationships with teachers or do you want more of a lecture hall style? Do you want things private colleges offer like May terms, more personal attention, and less competition for opportunities like internships? Or a bigger university which might have more amenities and different opportunities? You can certainly find a great fit at either and both offer you great educations, one is just smaller, than the other, it all depends on what feels right to you. One thing that may seem like it is completely different between the two is cost, which is really not the case. Public colleges are often too big to offer many scholarships and grants while private colleges have many academic, extracurricular grants and scholarships formed by alumni donation. So often times the prices between the two are pretty similar.
7. Credentials.
A school definitely doesn’t need to be Ivy League to be great, but you still might want to check out a few things to see the what quality of an education you’ll get there. Both Niche and College Board have things like what percentage of students graduate in four years (which would definitely help your wallet) what percentage of students return for their sophomore year or transfer out, what percentage of classes are taught by actual professors verse teacher aides, the student to professor ratio in a class, success with job placement after college, and reviews by actual students.
8. Visit.
Visiting the colleges you are considering is always a good thing to do. It can help you see the personality of the campus, teachers, students, and city it is in. Even if you think you are one hundred percent sold on a certain school, take a trip there before signing on the dotted line. The college that I’m attending this fall, wasn’t anywhere near the top of my list, I simply visited because it was close enough to do that. I immediately fell in love with the friendly teachers, tight knit feel of the campus, and the programs they had to offer. On the other hand, one college was my second choice, but when I visited, the admissions staff couldn’t seem to care less that I was there, they made us wait forever, lost my paperwork saying that I was planning to visit and the students weren’t that friendly. I also highly recommend doing an overnight or two at colleges you are seriously considering, it gives you a real feel of how life would be there for you as you get to stay in the dorms, hang out with students, attend classes, talk to professors and eat in the dining hall.
9. Scholarships.
There are scholarships for literally everything you can think of out there and not just ones offered by colleges. You can get one for being short, money savvy, volunteer work, going green, poetry, liking to to read. There are many scholarship search engines out there as well as scholarships and grants offered by colleges. So even if your school of choice seems way too pricey, look to see the average financial aid package given, what scholarships they have (both academic and extracurricular) and how many students receive financial aid. Some schools to great with financial aid, making them much more affordable than they look, while other schools that might seem cheaper offer hardly any aid at all making them more expensive in the long run.
10. There’s no place like home.
And finally, just so I can have a number ten, pick a school that feels right to you. A school where when you step on campus, you feel welcome and comfortable. After all, you’ll be living there for four years so you should pick a school that makes you feel safe and at home, a school not where you’ll just survive but thrive.
