Stages of Building a College List

Building a college list has several different stages. Take your time going through each stage.

Just Starting

Before you start researching, get a clear idea of what you are looking for. What is non-negotiable? What is nice to have, but not required? Thinking about geography, demographics, academic offerings, social and extracurricular activities, school size, etc. What are your TOP FIVE most important things? Make an actual list.

Visit Naviance and use SuperMatch to begin to find schools

Save any that might be even a little interesting to your "Colleges I'm Thinking About" list in Naviance

Expanding: You have a sense of what you want. You just need to find schools that match your criteria.

Use SuperMatch in Naviance. Try tweaking your criteria to see if you get different results.

Try other searches like College Board's Big Future or even just use Google. If you search for a school in Google, it will bring up a panel on the right side. All the way at the bottom is a "people also search for" section.

Add all these schools to the "Colleges I'm Thinking About" list in Naviance. It will make it much easier to assess balance and narrow it down later.

Narrowing & Balancing: You have found a whole bunch of schools that match your needs. Now it is time to decide which should stay on your list.

First, make sure that all of your schools are on your "Colleges I'm Thinking About" list in Naviance. This makes it much easier to quickly access Scattergrams.

Create a four-column table, with headers: Likely, Target, Reasonable Reach, and Far Reach.

Using the Scattergrams in Naviance, assess what each school is for you. If you are not sure, ask your counselor. Write that school name in the appropriate column. If it is between two, go ahead and write it on the line between the columns.

Use this chart to then narrow your list, while keeping it balanced. Decide how many schools you want to apply to in total and the ratio of Likely to Target to Reach, and then narrow down within each column.

Finalizing: You think you are close to a final, balanced list.

Start to organize your list using a spreadsheet. What is the application due date? What is the application fee? Are there supplemental essays? Are they test-optional?

Once you have filled out your spreadsheet, look it over. Is that a reasonable amount of work? Money spent on application fees? Can you meet those deadlines with the number of schools on your list? If the answer to any of those questions is no, go back to "Narrowing" and pare down your list.

Do you have good financial fits on your list? A good financial fit is a target or likely your family has determined to be affordable using their net price calculator and available information about scholarships. (We do not count reaches in this category, because the likelihood of acceptance is so low.) If not, go back to "Expanding" and look specifically for schools that fall into Target/Likely and meet your family's financial requirements.