Narrowing down your college list
August 8, 2012
When you put together your list of schools for college applications, it's usually divided into three categories - top, reach and safety. The top schools are those that you're really gunning for, ones within your range (GPA, SAT, financial) and offering a lot of the opportunities you're interested in. Reach schools are the ones that feel a bit like playing the lottery. You dish out the application fee on the off chance that Yale or Dartmouth decides to welcome you. Then there are the safety schools - colleges and universities that you certainly like and would be satisfied joining, but just didn't engage you or grab your attention and hear the same way as your top choices.
Ideally, your list should be made up primarily of top schools, with a few reach ones thrown in and at least two or three Safety Schools as a net so you can sleep well at night. But with so many colleges out there and so many opportunities open to you, how do you narrow down those choices? Consider a few of these tips.
1. Resources. Friends, relatives, relatives of friends, guidance counselors, teachers, undergraduates, college websites, forums, libraries, bookstores - all of these are great opportunities to enrich your understanding of the schools out there and which ones will be a great match for you. While your guidance counselor's job is to sit down with you and talk through the process of finding a college, keep in mind that he or she isn't the only source. Ask people where they could see you - a small school, a state university, ivy or sub-ivy, what's your fit in their eyes?
2. Regions. Take climate into account wherever you're considering going. If the Pacific Northwest is too rainy for your taste, then you've managed to cut a swathe out of the country's potential schools. If Florida's too humid, you're almost certain to want to look elsewhere, and maybe specifically in the Southwest, where summers are arid.
3. Sports teams. You may not get to play for the UCONN Huskies, but if you're not the sort of person who wants to attend a giant university that's always in the press for its sports, maybe that's a good indicator that it's not the school for you. Or that it is!
4. Scholarships. Money is a major factor in college applications. Applying for a scholarship at the college of your choice can make or break it as your top school.
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