How do I decide where to go!  

Congratulations!  You now have answers from all of your applications, and now need to decide which of your offers/conditional acceptances you will choose!  The wealth of options can be confusing and feel overwhelming, so let's go back to the basics of what makes a "Good" University, a place where you can thrive-- FIT! 

If you remember the three parts of fit are: 

Personal     

Academic

Financial

Now, imagine if you were to create your imaginary "Perfect" place with the things that you found that you would love to have in your next step.  See if you can find representations from all 3 of the areas of "fit".  These can be anything from closeness to an airport, to class size, to availability of experiences or travel, to weather, what you are interested in studying , housing, supports/systems that you would like to have, how much you would need to pay or anything else that you consider important.   This should end up to be a bit of a "Frankenstein", of things from what you know about yourself, and from all of the research that you did on all of your schools.  

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Side note: 

For cost please make sure that you are comparing apples to apples-- meaning that you are looking at numbers that include the costs for the same things. If a number only includes tuition as an example it is not the equivlent of a number that includes tuition and housing, or tuition, housing, and food.   Please see The cost factor for support with this. 

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Once you have your imaginary dream school/choice brainstormed, take that information and put it into a spread sheet.  Put the things you want in a school on one side, and list the Universities with Offers on the other side.  Go back to your research notes and spend some more time on the University websites, visit in person if you can, and/or talk to University representatives and current students to answer any questions that are hovering.  Fill out the spread sheet with information as you do so.  Usually a University pops to the top of the list.  This process helps you to make your decision by making educated connections between you and your options, and hopefully choose a place where you will thrive.