Choosing A College
Finding Your College Fit
Get organized with a spreadsheet!
You will be collecting a LOT of information about colleges. An organized spreadsheet can help keep it all straight.
Safety, Match, Reach, and Wildcard Schools
Ideally, students will apply to 3-10 colleges.
You should truly want to attend ALL schools you apply to, but safety schools are schools you know you can get into, match are schools you have a decent chance of getting into, and reach schools are more difficult to get into, and wildcard schools are extremely difficult for anyone to get into. Even students with "perfect" academic records and all the extracurriculars often don't get admitted to their reach or wildcard schools, but sometimes they do!
Learn about the different types of colleges and degrees
How to Find a College that Fits You
Search for colleges using specific criteria
*I advise students to use flexible searches. Do multiple searches with different criteria and keep it fairly open. You don't want to eliminate too many schools right off the bat.
Recommended Reading
Books that might help open your mind about your college options:
Colleges That Change Lives by Loren Pope (Website )
Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be by Frank Bruni
College Visits
A checklist to help you get the most out of your college visits, from BigFuture
Make sure you're prepared with questions to ask on all parts of the college tour. This blog post has some great ideas to help you create your own list. Identify which questions the parents will ask and which ones the student will ask. Don't do all the talking as the parent- your child is the one going to college!