Advice on Building a College List (from a MAGIC Alum)
Even the most decisive of students can find it extremely difficult to build and narrow down their college list. After all, it has a pretty big impact on how and where you’ll spend the next four years of your life. In this blog post, I’ll try to help this process with some tips and lessons I learned from building my own college list.
First Off — A Little Bit About Me and My MAGICal Experiences
My name is Luanna Quinalha (she/her) and I’m a MAGIC Alum and Ambassador. I’m Brazilian and I was MAGIC’s first international mentee. I also graduated high school in December 2022 (the school year here is from February to December) and applied to US and UK universities for Fall 2023 entry.
As a sophomore in high school, I found out about MAGIC and became a computer science mentee in the 2020–2021 session. With the help and support of my wonderful mentor, I coded a website about quantum computing. My mentor is a Tech Lead at Apple and it was an absolute honor to learn from her — both about coding and nail art! This experience substantially increased my interest in technology and I am glad to say that I’m still coding to this day. I am now the Ambassador for the 2020–2021 MAGIC session.
In the Summer of 2021, I was a physics mentee at MAGIC. It was wonderful to have Sarah Rice as a mentor. I was used to being a decisive person, and Sarah noticed my anxiety around quickly choosing a topic for my final project. I’ll never forget what she told me: “Are you trying to choose now because you believe you truly have to, or is it because you’re uncomfortable? If so, you need to get comfortable with that”. At the end, my project was a literature review about warp drives (yes, like the ones from Star Trek — I talked about them in an earlier post).
Finally, I became an intern during the 2021–2022 MAGIC session. Working under the guidance of Smriti Pramanick was amazing. She was so supportive and it felt like working on a team. We were always asking for and receiving feedback from each other, sharing skills, and brainstorming. As an intern, I worked on something completely new to me — social media. Smriti and I created MAGIC’s Instagram account and alum group, which involved setting up Instagram and Discord, working with ambassadors, and creating long-term plans for both platforms.
Overall, MAGIC was an integral part of my high school experience. I’m so lucky I found it early on and had the chance to participate multiple times. MAGIC has been a wonderful way to explore my interests and develop my skills and initiative.
Moving On — My Tips
- Think about what YOU want from college
It’s easy to get caught up in what other people consider to be the best option for you, and what rankings say. If getting into a top 20 school is what motivated you throughout high school, that’s great — we all need motivation. However, when it’s time to actually build your college list, I would encourage you to consider what matters to you. When I say that, I mean factors like:
- Curriculum type/academic flexibility
- Majors and departments
- Student life
- Location
- Anything else you deem to be important
Reflecting about what makes you happy can lead you to surprising conclusions. In my case, it led to five historically women’s colleges in my list — options I hadn’t even considered before senior year.
2. Have a starting point/criteria
In order to start comparing and considering college options according to your factors, you need a starting point. There are far too many colleges in the US to try to consider all of them. In my case, the starting point was that I only applied to universities that could provide me with a better education than the best university in my country. Maybe your starting point will be something completely different: you could already know that you only want to attend a large, public university, for example, or that you’re only interested in liberal arts colleges or schools on the East coast. Whatever it is, start searching through colleges’ websites that meet your first criteria, and then compare them based on your other preferences.
3. Make sure you really like/love each option on your list
Applying to college is expensive. There’s no use in applying somewhere you know you wouldn’t want to attend. I’m not saying to only include dream schools on your list — that would put you at high risk of not getting accepted. What I’m saying is, when you choose your realistic and safety schools, research them as carefully as you researched your dream schools and make sure that receiving an acceptance letter from any of them would make you happy. I followed this rule very closely, and though it required a lot of research and reflection, I’m glad I did.
4. Talk to current students or alums
When I was considering applying Early Decision to one of the schools on my list, what made me ultimately decide that this was the right choice for me was talking to a very recent graduate. In my case, I talked to someone who majored in the program I was interested in (Physics). You can reach out to current students or alums via social media, LinkedIn, or email. Alternatively, you can ask the department that hosts your intended major for recommendations on who to speak with. I talked to some people via messaging, while others agreed to set up virtual meetings. It’s a great way to get your questions about student life and campus culture answered.
5. Go beyond the websites
If you’re unsure about applying to a certain school but can’t talk to a student/alum , there are still things you can look for that go beyond the university’s website. Two of my favorite resources to look at are a university’s YouTube channels and student blogs. If you want to hear from someone outside of their university’s platform, you can search for videos like “a day in my life at College X” or “College X vlog”. Finally, I really recommend Domonique Cynthia’s YouTube channel, where she interviews students from multiple universities with questions about academics, social life, campus culture, and more.
Conclusion
I want to end by saying that it’s really important to let go of preconceived notions you have about college. It may be hard to let go of the rankings, let go of the names, or let go of what everyone around you agrees should be your dream. Maybe after completing all of your research you’ll discover you were right all along about what your dream school is, but it’s good to start this process with an open mind regardless. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind while building your college list, and it will lead to some interesting self-discovery. I hope you found this helpful!
