College Prep: How to Find the Right College for You
Choosing a college to attend is a huge life decision. With so many great schools throughout the country, it can be hard for students to figure out which schools will be a perfect fit for them. There are a lot of factors that need to be considered, including cost, course offerings, location, and more! Here, we’ve put together a road map for creating your list of perfect colleges to send your applications off to, including an extremely helpful resource to assist you in your college search!
Starting Your College Search
For most students, narrowing down a list of colleges to apply to is a somewhat lengthy process. It is something that students should start to think about as sophomores or juniors in high school and plan for gradually and thoroughly. After all, there are many moving pieces that need to be considered before a student ultimately steps foot onto a college campus as a student.
Students and families need to make sure there’s adequate time for preparing for and taking standardized tests like the ACT and SAT, visiting campuses and taking tours, identifying a list of colleges to send applications off to, writing high-quality college application essays, and completing the entire college application process. While all of these aspects of the college prep process are important, today we’re focusing on identifying colleges to which you should apply.
So, how exactly do you decide which colleges you should apply to? Well, there’s no easy answer to that question. We have, however, put together a long list of recommendations for how to arrive at your list of perfect-match colleges.
Factors to consider:
The first step in the entire college search process is to set aside some time to sit back and reflect. Give yourself time to really think through each of the areas we outline below. Be honest with yourself as you think about these things, and keep track of what you find out about yourself and your dream for your college experience. After all, choosing a college to attend is a decision that will follow you through every area of your life, including your professional life, financial life, social life, and more. Ask yourself which of the factors below is the most important to you and why. Map out the picture of your perfect college and college experience before even starting your search so that you can see what really matters to you.
Cost
We’re putting cost at the top of our list because it’s a very major aspect of higher education. You’ve probably heard about the current student loan crisis, and they don’t call it a crisis for nothing! Americans together owe approximately $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. That is an insane amount of money, yet for many students taking out loans is a must, and they wouldn't be able to attend college without this type of assistance.
But that doesn’t mean you have to just accept student loans and sign up for enormous amounts of debt if you want to get a college degree. There are things you do to try to lower your overall college costs. Here are some major cost-related factors to consider:
What is the tuition rate at the school? This is the very first money-related thing to note. It’s important to be aware of how costly the schools you’re looking at are. Private schools are more expensive than public ones. Tuition tends to be significantly lower for students applying to public schools in the state where they are a resident. Keep these primary factors in mind early on.
Will you receive financial aid? Many students receive need-based, discounted tuition rates. This is primarily dictated by the income your family brings in. Go through the entire FAFSA process to determine what exactly you will need to borrow or find in order to get your education at a specific school.
What scholarships and grants are available? Many schools offer what we call merit-based scholarships. These are automatic scholarships that the college itself will provide to students who show a certain history of academic success. For example, a college may set up their merit-based scholarships so that students receiving a 3.5 GPA throughout high school in combination with receiving a 28 on the ACT will automatically qualify for an extra $2,500 in merit-based scholarship assistance each year. This is just an example, but it’s a pretty common way for schools to structure their merit-based scholarship programs. Do some digging on the merit-based setup at the specific schools you’re considering. You might find a similar process at many of the schools, and you might discover that raising your GPA or ACT/SAT scores could help you save money!
Similarly, there are tons of external scholarships out there. Millions of dollars in scholarship money is wasted each year because students don’t apply for the scholarships. Ask around your local community — this is a great place to start looking for scholarships. Your school counselor should also have a plethora of information for you on the matter. You can also leverage online tools that gather your information to help you find scholarships you might qualify for.
Overall, the best thing you can do is be fully aware of the costs of what you’re signing up for. Talk to your parents about tuition and financial aid so that you know how taking out student loans will affect your financial life down the road.
Location
This is another important one, and it should be a bit more straightforward than worrying about the cost of your education. Ask yourself a few questions about the setting of your preferred college. How do you feel about moving away from home? Does it make you a little worried? Or are you excited to get as far away as you can? Do you want to be in a big, bustling city? Or do you prefer a rural, quieter setting? This is another huge consideration when pondering which colleges you want to apply to.
If you’re eager to go live and be in a big city, you’ll definitely want to make sure the colleges on your list fit that criteria. There are many amazing colleges nestled in small rural cities throughout the country, but those wouldn’t be the right fit for the person looking for the big city experience and vice versa.
Even if you think a certain college will be the perfect setting for you, we can’t encourage you enough to actually go and visit it! College visits are hugely important when ultimately deciding what school to attend. A school may look great on paper and their website, but you really never know how you feel about it until you see it and can get a feel for what life will be like for you there.
Of course, in the wake of COVID-19, it’s not always realistic to go on a college visit right now. Many colleges are leveraging virtual tours that let students get a glimpse of their campus and campus life all from their computer at home. While this is definitely second best to going on an actual visit, it’s a great option to take advantage of right now.
Course Offerings
At seventeen or eighteen, no one is asking you to decide what career you want to enter and then go do that and only that for the rest of your life. It’s totally and completely fine (and encouraged!) to go off to college with an open mind and no academic plan. College is a great time to explore areas that you’ve never considered much about but that you find intriguing.
For this part of your brainstorm, rather than asking yourself “what do I want to major in?” ask yourself “what do I enjoy learning?” If you tend to enjoy math and science courses, you may want to gravitate toward colleges that have strong computer science and engineering programs. In contrast, if you most enjoy learning languages and exploring literature, you might want to think more about liberal arts colleges or schools with strong humanities programs and several language course offerings.
On a similar note, there will always be more diverse course offerings at larger schools than there will be at smaller schools. If you may be interested in majoring in something very specific, it’s a good idea to look toward bigger schools with more catered major options. For example, at the University of Minnesota, a student can get a degree in Biology, Society, and Environment, whereas at a smaller school they would likely simply major in Biology. Neither is a bad option, but the former definitely opens different doors than the latter might.
Size
Some colleges are enormous and others are smaller even than many high schools. The University of Minnesota has approximately 34,000 undergraduate students enrolled in a given semester. The campus spans over 1,200 acres and has buildings in both Minneapolis, Minnesota and St. Paul, Minnesota. In contrast, Macalester College, also located in St. Paul, Minnesota, sits nestled on just 53 acres and has only 2,100 students.
Both the U of M and Macalester are really great schools with challenging academic programs, but the extreme difference in the size of the student body plays a huge role in the college experience. At Macalester, you will likely become acquainted with a large percentage of your fellow students, whereas at the U of M you will likely constantly run into people you do not know.
Other
We’ve merely exposed to you the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other things that could and will play a role in your college hunt. Continue to ask yourself what’s important to you and what you want your college experience to look like.
Is it important to you to join Greek life? Not all colleges have Greek life! Do you want to play sports? If so, at what level? Division I athletics are far different from Division III athletics at smaller schools. Have you dreamed of spending a semester abroad in a foreign country and expanding your horizons with this type of experience? Some colleges encourage this type of program more than others and structure credits in a way to help make this an opportunity for students that won’t set them back on their trek to graduation.
Everyone is different. This is going to a quite personal journey, and it may take some time and effort before you know the answers to these questions. We recommend keeping a running list of areas that are important to you in your perfect college experience. You’ll find that you continue to come up with new ideas and can then add them to the list and to your overall search.
The Search
After you’ve thought through all of these important aspects of your future college education, it’s time to start searching! You probably have schools that are already on your radar, but there are so many schools out there that maybe your perfect fit is a college you’ve never actually even heard of yet. In that case, how do you find these great, hidden colleges?
Great question! We recommend using an online college search tool from Money.com. Money.com has worked hard to gather tons of information on colleges throughout the country and to put it in one convenient place for students and families. Their site lets you filter schools based on several different factors, including average ACT/SAT scores, average student debt upon graduation, and more.
What we love about Money.com’s college filtering tool is that it allows you to enter specific personal preferences. If I want to attend a small, private college in Minnesota that does not require the ACT, I can search exactly that and be presented with a short list of colleges that are a fit for that exact information. Furthermore, you can look at information about many schools all in the same place, which helps when comparing schools’ information, especially costs, and working to narrow down your list of schools.
Once you have your list of schools, your work isn’t quite done yet. It’s never a good idea to apply to a school based simply on information about it. You need to SEE the school and the campus in action and hopefully meet students and professors and people to understand how you would feel as a student at a given college.
With COVID-19 interrupting many plans for traveling anywhere, colleges have taken to developing online virtual college visits to allow prospective students a way to get a small taste of the campus and life at the school. While it’s not nearly the same as walking around campus and sitting in a classroom as a visitor, it’s becoming our new normal right now. After all, many college courses have presently moved online, similar to many high school courses at this time. While this is our normal, it’s a great idea to take full advantage of being able to “visit” colleges right from your couch.
Lastly, we recommend slimming down your list. This whole process could very well leave you with a list of 20 colleges that you are intrigued by. That’s great! However, there probably isn’t much of a point to applying to 20 different schools. After all, your next step in this process will be to dive into the applications, and if you have too many schools on your plate you may feel overwhelmed and miserable. Instead, look critically at the schools you’ve selected and compare them with one another. Bring that list down to ten or fewer schools (as a general rule of thumb) and you’re ready to get moving on college apps!
Good luck, and happy prepping!
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