Keep your college research info organized with this spreadsheet!
You will be collecting a LOT of information about colleges. An organized spreadsheet can help keep it all straight. This will create a copy for you, so feel free to edit and personalize it to make it work for you.
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 (10% or less.) 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. It's easy to get overwhelmed with too many options. Consider starting small with a few schools you are familiar with and then search for a few additional schools that match your criteria.
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
Now is the time to set up "official" college visits if you haven't already. My advice is to start with a few colleges closer to home to get started. Then you can branch out to others further away if that interests you. It's a good idea to visit at least one public and one private college, and a small, medium and large college. This will help you get a feel for the options that are out there and what you prefer. You will also then have those as reference points when visiting other colleges.
There are many different ways to visit a college campus. Learn more in this article. Different colleges have their own procedures and options for visits, so be sure to check out their admissions websites to learn more. Don't be afraid to contact the admissions office to ask questions.
Virtual tours are great as a preview before deciding to visit, looking back after visits to refresh your memory after you have visited, and as a substitute for a visit if you can't make it to the campus in person.
Here is a very useful 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. Before you visit, 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!