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How to choose a college that serves your purpose

Once you know what your purpose for going to college is, you are ready to begin your college search. If you are now thinking I'm going to give you a system for quickly identifying the one right college for you I have some bad news for you: There is no one right college for you!

Any college that will help you accomplish your purpose is a good college for you. [If you don't know your purpose visit http://CollegeWin.com and look for the article titled The best reason to go to college.] It doesn't matter what the US News ranking is for the college. It could be ranked number 1 in the nation, but if it doesn't offer the educational opportunities that will help you become the person you want to be and to live the life you want to lead it is a lousy choice for you. It doesn't matter how expensive or inexpensive the college is. If it doesn't offer the opportunity for you to grow into the person you want to be it is not worth the money.

But out of the over 4,000 colleges in this country the chances are excellent that you will find many places where you could get more than your moneys worth. So you job isn't to find the one best college and then hope you get admitted and can afford to go. Your job is to find a list of colleges any one of which offers a great opportunity for you to become who you want to be. In other words the goal of the college search is uncover multiple great options for you.

Since your goal is to construct a list of several colleges where you can thrive as a student you need to do some type of college search to create a list of candidate schools. Before providing you with a list of steps you can take to do a college search I want you to be clear about the objective of a college search process.

The goal of a college search is to identify schools that look like they might meet your needs so that you can do more detailed research on the colleges on your list to find out if they are likely to be a college where you will really thrive. So doing a college search is a balancing act between narrowing your search so you can actually take a closer look at every school on your list, and being open enough that you don't eliminate a school that might have been an excellent choice before even finding out about it.

How many colleges you are able to take a closer look at depends on the time and energy you are willing to invest in the process, but as a rule of thumb you should probably be looking for a list of at least 10 and not more than 100 colleges in your initial search.

So how do you find the list of colleges that might meet your needs? Here is a step by step process designed to systematically move from the thousands of colleges you could apply to down to a list of six to ten excellent choices.

Step 1: Know your minimum requirements.

Start with your minimum requirements list discussed at the beginning of this chapter. If you haven't yet taken the time to write down your minimum requirements for college do it now. List everything that is critical in order for you to thrive at a college:

* Is there a specific area of study you know you want to pursue? If you are sure that your reason to go to college involves studying a particular subject always use the availability of that subject as a required feature for a college to make it onto your list. If you are interested in a particular area but not sure you could still use that as a criteria to narrow your search if you are finding too many colleges in your search process.

* How selective should the admissions process be for a college are you considering? You are looking for colleges where there is a chance you will be admitted. But you may not want to consider a college that is much less selective than the one's you could get into. Remember, there is no such thing as an easy excellent education. You need a college that at least presents you with the opportunity to challenge yourself in the classroom.

* Can you see yourself wanting to be a student there? Are there features of a college such as location, sports teams or theater programs which are must haves for you to consider a college?

* Can you afford it? If you know you will need financial aid to pay for college you can look to see how much aid is offered when deciding whether or not to put a school on your list. Don't just look at tuition price when deciding if you can afford a particular school. Some colleges with high tuition also offer generous financial aid to needy students, and if may well be that a higher priced college that is committed to meeting financial need would be more affordable for you than a lower priced college that doesn't offer any grants.

Step 2: Build your prospect list(s).

Once you are clear on your minimum requirements its time to go to www.findtheperfectcollegeforme.easy and automatically generate the list, right? Sorry to say that isn't the case. Just as there isn't a single right college for you to attend, there isn't a single college search strategy that will automatically produce the best list of possible colleges for you.

So I recommend that you do multiple searches using different strategies. Try the college matching websites, and at each website try different search criteria and save the results of each search. If there are several features of college that are important to you such as preferring a certain size college but these are not absolute requirements try running the search with different combinations of your optional preferences. Try more than one college matching website.

Look through the mail you are getting from colleges if you have recently taken college entrance exams and recycle any of them that don't meet your minimum requirements. Put those that meet your minimum requirements on a separate list. If there is a college guide tailored to your interests that offers information about your key criteria consider taking the time to quickly go through all the college listings in that guide with a pen putting a big X through a college as soon as you see evidence that it doesn't meet your minimums. Then go though again and see if any of those you didn't X out seem to offer some of your preferred college features and create a list of prospects from this book.

At the early stages of your college search the more lists you form the better. You will narrow down these lists to a manageable number before you actually apply, but the more initial candidates you are willing to investigate, the more likely it is that your final application list will be full of excellent choices. If this seems like too much effort, just imagine yourself earning a $2,500 college admissions consulting fee for your effort.

Step 3: Narrow down your list(s).

Once you have done your initial research to identify possible colleges worth investigating further, your goal should be to reduce your list to six to ten colleges which you know would be great places for you to go to college. You want to know before you apply that every single one of the colleges on your final list can provide the results you want to get out of going to college.

Once again I'm going to depart from the conventional advice about how to construct a college admissions list because I believe it is better not to go to college at all than to go to a college you don't believe is going to help you achieve the life you want to live after college. So I am not going to advise you to build a strategic list where you have one or two reach colleges where you will be happily surprised if you are admitted, a few colleges where you have pretty good odds of being offered admission, and one or two safety schools where you are almost certain to be admitted. There are three reasons why I don't think this is the best strategy for building a list of colleges where to which you will apply.

First, it suggests you will be thrilled if you end up attending your reach school, mildly disappointed if you end up in one of your likely schools and depressed and/or embarrassed if your only choice is to attend your safety school. If you are going to college on purpose you shouldn't set yourself up for such disappointment. You goal is to get an education that will grow you into a more powerful person who can go on to lead a more successful and satisfying life than you would have lived had you not gone to college.

What does the U.S. News ranking or the average SAT score of the freshman class have to do with achieving your goal? How selective a school is gives you some indication of the level of academic challenge you will experience if you enroll, but it is at best a rough gauge.

In other articles I have pointed out that how challenging a particular college will be and how much you learn while you are there depends at least as much on your personal commitment to learning and growing as it does on the selectivity of the college. So you can get an excellent education at any college where the classes are reasonably challenging.

Of much more importance to you should be whether the college offers the opportunities you need to move quickly toward your goals during college and will help you get a running start toward reaching your post college goals. So a school simply shouldn't be on your application list unless you believe it will provide you with those opportunities. You want a list where you know all your choices are good choices.

Second, if you find yourself excited to attend a college which will be equally excited to have as a student you will have a much better chance of getting scholarship or institutional grant aid from that school. The college you would be lucky to get into realizes you are lucky to get into it and is unlikely to offer much merit based aid. If they have a policy of meeting all or a percentage of need based aid and you have enough need they may offer you grants, but increasingly financial aid budgets are being used to shape the incoming class, which means more merit money is being offered and even need based aid may be slanted in favor of those students the university really wants to attract.

If you would drag down the average SAT or ACT score and average high school G.P.A. of the entering class and you also don't bring exceptional skills and aren't a member of a group they are focused on recruiting then the college may not work too hard to enroll you once they admit you. In fact, they may have admitted you because they need a few students paying full tuition to balance their budget. If possible you want to be thrilled to be going to a college that is thrilled to have you come.

Third, where you go to college matters less to your future success than you probably think. A name brand college may help you get a great first job, but graduating at the top of the class in a good but less prestigious college may also help you get a great first job. Related work experience gained while still in college may be even more helpful in landing a great first job after college.

And once you land that first job your resume will become increasingly about your work experience and job performance and less and less about where you went to school. So it is vitally important that you go to a college that provides you with an opportunity to prepare yourself to succeed once you leave college. It matters only slightly what the name of the college on your diploma happens to be.

Don't get fixated on attending one great college to which you aspire. There isn't only one best college for you. There are many great opportunities, and if you really take advantage of any one of them you are likely to thrive after college. If your college search doesn't produce at least one ôaspirationalö or ôreachö college on your list just consider yourself lucky to be avoiding this potential distraction.

If your list of prospective colleges still numbers in the hundreds, you may need to do some additional filtering before seeking more detailed information. One way to shorten your list is to see which colleges came up on several of your different search lists. While there are probably a few colleges that fit you well but only showed up when you followed one search strategy, odds are that the colleges showing up on several of your searches match more of the characteristics you are looking for in an ideal college. So the best next step might be to seek additional information from the schools that surfaced the most in your searches.

If paying for college is a big concern you should look at one of the guide books such as Peterson's or The College Board's that lists financial aid information and consider two factors. First, you should take a look at the % of students receiving institutional grants. Second, you should take a look at how your SAT or ACT scores and high school grades compare to the scores and grades of each colleges freshman class.

If you are at or above the 75th percentile for test scores and high school grades, then most colleges will be anxious to enroll you as part of their class and the majority of private colleges are now using their financial aid offers strategically to try to shape the size and quality of their entering class. So if paying for college is a challenge you might favor colleges where they are likely to be at least as thrilled you have you enroll as you are thrilled to attend.

Don't take this strategy too far though, and limit yourself to a list of colleges where you are probably at or above the 95th percentile compared to their students for test scores and high school grades. Not only will you be less challenged in the classes of such a school, but the admissions office may suspect you are using them as a safety school and it would be a waste of time to chase you and perhaps even a mistake to admit you.

If there is a school that you really want to attend because of a particular program they offer, but you appear to be over qualified to attend that school you will need to make sure the admissions office is convinced you are serious. If you find yourself in this situation and are also worried about paying for college, you should be contacting that school early to see if they have any large merit scholarship programs for which you can apply.

If paying for college isn't a concern you might prefer looking at schools where you are closer to average or even slightly below average in terms of test scores and high school grades. Those schools are still likely to offer you admission if you do a credible job of explaining why you are a good fit for what they offer, and because you look more like the typical student you are more likely to find the class work challenging.

Of course you can find ways to challenge yourself at most. But if you are like most human beings sometimes you will be tempted to take it easy if there isn't much external pressure on you to work harder. Since you want to grow yourself into a more powerful person in college having some external pressure to work harder is probably helpful. If you are looking at a long list of prospective colleges and need a quick strategy for shortening that list to the number you are willing and able to research, then considering the academic selectivity of each college can be a quick and reasonable way to pare the list down.

Step 4: Ask the colleges to tell you what they have to offer.

Once your list of prospective colleges is manageable I recommend you visit each college website to get a sense of the story they have to tell about themselves, and also to request additional information from the admissions office. If you know you are interested in a particular program of study be sure to ask for information about that program. If you know there are particular extra curricular activities you want to be involved in ask for information about those areas as well. If paying for college is going to be a concern ask for information about financial aid and scholarship opportunities. Don't make the admissions office do extra work to provide information you don't really care about, but if not having a chance to play intramural ultimate Frisbee is somehow a deal breaker for you go ahead and ask.

Keep in mind that the admissions offices in most colleges are dealing with tens or even hundreds of thousands of inquiries from prospective students, so don't be too put off if the initial response is to send you a stock brochure and a form letter thanking you for your interest in attending Thank You For Your Interest College. Also keep in mind that the influence of the US News college rankings has caused many colleges to want to maximize their number of applications so they can appear more selective. So the job of the admissions office is to encourage you to apply if there is any reason why you might reasonably consider attending.

As a prospective college student, however, you want to apply only to colleges you really want to attend, and you can't make that determination without getting your questions answered. So if you asked specific questions and only got the form letter and college brochure, read through them and then contact the admissions office again with any questions that weren't answered by the information provided.

In this second communication let them know you have read the information they sent, are still interested, and still have questions. You are now a more likely prospect and they are therefore more likely to invest the time to provide personal answers to specific questions.

Of course, if you read the materials provided and find a reason to cross them off your list don't waste their time asking follow-up questions that won't change your decision. Respect their limited time, but when you have a question that will determine whether or not you will apply and can't find the answer easily on your own let the admissions office know what you need to make your decision.

Step 5: Check their references.

Another useful step in researching colleges is to speak with current students and recent graduates. Often these students can provide a perspective on opportunities to get involved, quality of the social life on campus, how challenging the course work is, how helpful the faculty are when a student is struggling in a class and how well the college supports students' efforts to find internships and post-graduation jobs.

If you know the program in which you intend to major you want to speak to current students and recent graduates from that specific program. The admissions office can usually help you make contact with such students. If they don't offer this service you can try contacting the academic department directly.

When you speak to students and graduates try to keep two things in mind. First, remember that every student has his or her own perspective, so don't assume you will have exactly the same experience as the student you are talking with. Second, keep in mind that students are not necessarily experts on everything the college has to offer.

So focus your questions on things with which students are likely to have experience. If the student is honest enough to tell you he or she doesn't really know anything about how competitive it is to get into the marching band or what percentage of students work for pay during the school year appreciate his or her honesty. Whatever you do, don't try to lead your eye witness into giving you the answers you are expecting. You want the student's perspective so listen much more than you speak.

Of course the ideal way to get a student perspective on a particular college is to visit the campus. You may not have the time or money to go on a thirty college tour between your junior and senior years of high school, but if you do have the opportunity to visit there is no better way to get the insider perspective on course work, faculty quality, campus activities, food quality, public safety or career services than going to the campus and talking with students.

If you can't afford to use campus visits as a form of research prior to deciding where to apply, you should consider visiting the colleges where you are admitted before making your choice. If this isn't possible don't despair. Many a college student has set foot on campus for the first time when arriving for the start of classes, and if they did their homework before choosing that college it usually turns out well.

By the way, the sooner you start the college search process, the more reasonable it is to gather additional information about each school on you list, so start early. Your junior year in high school is actually the ideal time to start evaluating what you want out of college and researching possible colleges. That will leave you free during your senior year to focus on putting together your college applications.

Step 6: Make your choices.

Your goal is to find six to ten colleges where you would be delighted to attend and where you have a reasonable chance of being admitted. If you are struggling to find at least six you may need to go back to step one to see if any of your minimum requirements are unrelated to getting the education you want.

For example, if you are only considering small colleges because you are concerned about feeling overwhelmed, but it turns out that not many small colleges offer degrees in aerospace engineering then the major is probably the critical education requirement and you may have to be open to attending a larger college. If all of your minimum requirements are essential for your college education to prepare you for what you want to do after college, then you may need to invest more effort in step two to provide a few more possible prospects. You can then take these prospects through the evaluation processes in steps three, four and five to see if any of them merit making it onto your application list.

If you have more than ten colleges still on your list congratulate yourself on your hard work and good fortune. You are now in a position to choose your top ten from this larger pool.

How you do this is part science and part gut check. If any of these colleges really excite you move them up the list. If any of these colleges seem like they meet your requirements but leave you a bit cold move them down your list.

Also, move up colleges that are likely to be more affordable. Even if you have plenty of money there is no sense paying twice as much to get the same quality education. If you aren't expecting much in the way of financial aid this may mean preferring a State University in the State where you are a resident if any of those are still on you list.

If you expect to receive financial aid you might not be able to tell which colleges will end up being most affordable simply by looking at tuition, room and board costs. This is because most private colleges offer institutional grants, which are essentially a discount on tuition, to at least some of their admitted applicants. So you might want to look at what percentage of students are offered institutional grants, and possibly the average grant amount and favor a school which offers more aid over an otherwise similarly attractive school which offers less.

You might also take a close look at where you stand in terms of SAT/ACT scores and high school grades compared to their most recent entering class. If you are around the 75th percentile or higher in these academic quality indicators a school is more likely to offer you significant grant aid in order to increase the probability that you will enroll. So use this knowledge to sort your list strategically.

Once you have sorted your list, apply to the top six to ten schools. If you know you are highly likely to be admitted to every school on this list sticking with six is fine and may save you considerable time and a couple hundred dollars in application fees. If you are less confident about being offered admission you may want to increase your odds by completing more applications. Just make sure that every college you apply to is one that you know will help you grow into the person you want to become. Don't apply to a college you'd really rather not attend just to get your list up to six. That is not a good strategy for getting more than your money's worth out of college and winning the college game.