How to Make a Perfect College List For You
Choosing the right colleges to apply to
If you are a soon to be senior, college application season is coming right up. You’ve taken your SAT or ACT, have strived to get the best grades in your classes, and now, it’s time to present yourself to colleges.
There’s a lot of things you will need to do to apply to colleges; write essays, get recommendation letters, and craft supplements, for example. But before you even get started on any of that, you have to do something first: create your college list.
Creating a college list is not easy, but it is very important. As such, a lot of students can be overwhelmed by the entire process; after all, there are thousands of accredited colleges, institutes, trade schools, and tech institutes in the United States alone. With all of these options, it can be a very daunting task to narrow your list down to a few colleges.
With this guide, I will help explain what to look for while searching for colleges, how many colleges to apply to, and the process of creating a list of colleges to apply to.
First things first; searching for colleges that suit you
Well, the first thing to do when creating a college list is to, well, search for colleges. But how should you go about searching?
Well, there are a lot of factors that need to be considered.
First and foremost is to consider subjective aspects.
There are a lot of situations unique to you that will require you to change your list. For example, do you want to stay in-state, or are you hoping to go out-of-state?
What kind of college environment are you looking for? Often, a quick search of a college social media page can tell a lot about its general atmosphere; the level of competition in a school, the social life of the students, the extent to which there is greek life, for example.
Then, you also need to consider what you plan to get from your college experience.
Now, it is fine if you are not completely sure with your choice of major; I for one was debating between going down the engineering or pre-medical field. But still, you should have a general idea of what fields you are interested in, and what kind of jobs you would want to do after college.
It’s alright if you are deciding between multiple fields, but if you don’t have anything in mind at all, it’s time to take a long look at your future plans, and maybe even consider if college is the best option for you. Remember, college is a big investment, and there are many other options, such as trade school, if you are not interested in any of the majors that are offered.
Anyways, if you have a list of areas you are interested in, you can start looking for schools that are especially strong in those areas.
Finally, and most importantly, it is time to look at it financially.
Determine your financial range, and ask your parents how much they are willing to spend on your college education.
Then, look at schools that you are interested in, and run an “estimated financial cost” to see how much you will probably pay. If the cost is far above what you are willing to pay, you should probably skip applying.
By now, you should have a certain subset of colleges in your mind; for example, it could be “In-state colleges that have strong greek life, an easygoing student body, and are strong in biology, mathematics, or english”.
Finding your range
Now that you have a general idea of the type of colleges you like, it is time to find colleges like these that are in your range. What I mean by this is colleges whose accepted student profiles (SAT/ACT scores, GPA, etc) are near yours (All of this data can be found online; colleges are required to publish this information every year as a “Common Data Set”).
Now is the time that you start putting colleges in three categories: Safeties, Matches, and Reaches. Colleges that have average accepted applicants close to your academic profile can be considered matches; if their accepted applicants tend to have a better profile, they are reaches, and if they have a lower profile, they are safeties.
The way I usually differentiate this is by SAT/ACT scores; if your score is 1300 on the SAT, then a school whose average accepted student has a score 100 points or more higher than that is a reach. Similarly, if its median SAT score is 100 points lower than yours, it’s a safety. Otherwise, consider it a match.
A good college list will contain about the same number of matches, reaches, and safeties.
Cutting it down
Now, you should have a good list of colleges that match your interests and are around your range, separated into categories of match, reach, and safety.
Now, it’s time to cut down your list into a manageable amount.
Now comes the question; how many colleges should you apply to overall? The answer, once again, depends.
A few questions you should consider asking yourself are how much money you are willing to spend on applications, how much time you have to fill out those applications, and how many colleges you are comfortable choosing between.
As a general rule, I would recommend that your list be between 4 and 18 colleges total. To cut it down to around that manageable amount, you will need to look at the colleges on your list, and consider which ones you really are interested in.
Firstly, you should have a sure-fire safety. This is a school that you are nearly guaranteed to be accepted to; meaning that either you have guaranteed admission based on your grades and test scores, or that it has a very high acceptance rate and your scores are far above those of the median admitted student.
Now, compare the rest of the colleges on your list to this school. Ask yourself, if you were choosing between your surefire safety and another school, which would you choose? If you would choose your sure-fire safety, then you should probably remove the other school from your list; after all, you probably will not attend, so why waste time and money anyways?
You’ve got your list!
Great! Now you should have a list of colleges that you are interested in, that you can afford, that have a student culture and atmosphere that appeal to you, and that are within your range.
If you are on the fence about some colleges, and you have the time, you can even consider touring them in person to get a first-hand impression. Otherwise, a lot of colleges offer virtual tours, which, although do not give a first-hand impression, can be useful in your decision making process.
A last note; don’t be afraid to change your list over time. Sometimes, your ideas on the perfect college will change, and you will remove some colleges from your list and add some others. As long as you don’t go overboard with this, this is fine.
I hope that this guide helps you remove some of the stress of the college admissions process, and wish you the best of luck in your journey!
Originally published at http://collegecareerscholarship.com on May 31, 2020.
