The Free College Counselor: The College Search Part 2

There are many that people look at when choosing their colleges. The prestige, the strengths and weaknesses by department, how hard it is to obtain admission, the location, the price etc. Although the decision of what colleges to apply to ultimately rests with you, here is a guide to help you get all the information you need in order to make a measured decision as to what schools to apply to:

Prestige: Though rankings systems are generally flawed in one way or another, the US News Rankings for Top Colleges is generally accepted to be reasonably accurate in terms of the relative “prestige” of a school. There are those that argue against going to a school for the prestige, and while you should not go to a school for the name alone if you don’t feel it is a good fit for you, more prestigious schools tend to have academically stronger student bodies, and we all know that you learn at least as much outside the classroom as you do in it. Thus, prestige should at least factor in to your college choices. Also note that the higher up the rankings you go, the harder it is to get into the schools. More on that in a moment.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Departments: The most important thing here is to remember that your interests may change throughout college, and your major is not set in stone. So don’t go to a school for a strong department if you think there is even a chance of changing your mind later. This is especially true of schools that have several colleges that have separate admissions (such as UPenn and Cornell), transferring later may be extremely hard. That being said, if you are sure and have your heart set on a major, the strength or weakness of that department may play a big factor in your choice to apply to the college.

Difficulty of Obtaining Admission: This is a big one here, and people often refer to this as the “strategy” in admissions. Typically, you want a healthy mix of “Safety” schools where you are virtually certain of admission, “Match Schools” where you are kind of borderline to get in, and “Reach” schools which are schools you would be very fortunate to get into. A very crude method of determining if a school is a safety, match, or a reach would be to look on the College Board website and look at the 25 percentile and 75 percentile of SAT scores by clicking on the “SAT, AP, CLEP” Tab. For example, here are the 25 percentile and 75 percentile at Yale University. If you are higher than the 75 percentile than you probably have a decent shot of getting in, while under 25 percentile you have a slim chance, and you are borderline if you are between the two. Of course, this is an oversimplified explanation, and it varies from school to school (at extremely competitive schools, even being at the 75 percentile gives you only a small chance at admission). It’s just a rough estimate to see where you stand. So you want to compile a list of colleges which include a healthy number of “Safeties”, “Matches”, and “Reaches” so that even if you don’t get into your “Reach” or “Match” schools, you won’t be looking at community college the coming fall.

Location is pretty self-explanatory, I can’t tell you what kind of place you like (though visiting colleges is definitely recommended). As for price, I can offer a reminder that it is important to have “Financial Safeties” as well as “Academic Safeties”, apply to places where you know you can get scholarships, in case you don’t receive as much aid as you expect from other colleges and you end up not being able to afford them. I found a site with a truly fantastic article on it regarding how much college costs called College Admissions Counseling so check out that site if you want to know more about financial aid, they have some solid articles regarding specific colleges as well as some more general information.

In a few hours, I will have a couple posts regarding the “Why ______ University” essay (which is good to do after you’ve researched what colleges you want to apply to so the reasons you chose that college are still fresh in your memory) and applying early to colleges (which I guess technically is part of your college search). Hope you found this helpful, as always feel free to leave me cool links you found or suggestions of things for me to write about!

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