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Tips for the College Search

Finding The Right College For You

If your like me, you'll find that the college search process can be a bit intimidating. After all, you are expected to balance your daily schoolwork and activities with studying for the SAT, and pondering some pretty serious questions about your career and lifelong goals, as well as where you want to live for the next few years. Sound tough? It doesn’t have to be. Keep this in mind as you sift through the piles of brochures and surf from Web site to Web site: your goal is not to find the “right” college—it is to find the college that is right for you.

Develop a Personal Profile
As you think about the type of college that might be right for you, you are developing a personal profile—a list of characteristics that are important to you. To narrow down the type of institution that you are looking for, begin by asking yourself the following questions:

Am I interested in attending a large research university or a small liberal arts college?
Would I prefer a campus that is located in an urban, rural, or suburban area?
Do I feel strongly about attending college close to home or would I consider going to a school that is far away or out-of-state?
Are there any academic programs or majors in which I am interested? What are they?

Which extracurricular clubs or sports interest me?
Would I prefer to live on-campus or an off-campus apartment or would I prefer to commute from home?
Right now, you may not know the answers to some of these questions, but just by thinking about them, you will begin to realize what is important to you in choosing a college.

Researching Colleges: Where to Look and What to Find
After you take the SAT/ACT, your mailbox will rapidly fill with brochures from colleges and universities that would like to tell you about their institutions. Through these brochures, you will discover each college’s history and values as well as its location, size and academic offerings.


Talk to Your Guidance Counselor
He or she has information on a variety of colleges and can show you how to search for colleges online using sites such as Petersons..com, NYMentor..com, and nycolleges..org. Your guidance counselor also can also tell you which colleges offer the best programs in a particular major, as well as the selectivity of certain institutions.


Compare Colleges
When you are researching colleges, you should be looking for information to compare to the personal profile that you created earlier. For example, if you have decided that you are interested in attending a small college where you will receive individual attention from your professors, then you shouldn’t waste too much time looking at materials from large universities with classes taught by graduate assistants. Following are some points that you may be interested in comparing as you research colleges:

Academic offerings, as well as pre-professional, accelerated or dual degree programs
Career preparation and locations where students complete internships and field experiences
Student/faculty ratio and opportunities for faculty mentoring
Average class size
Employment rates of recent graduates
Costs, Financial Aid and Scholarship Opportunities
Diversity of the campus population
Opportunities for study abroad
Services for students, such as academic support, technological facilities, and services for students with disabilities
Athletics, as well as clubs, activities and community service opportunities

Career counseling services
Visiting College Campuses
Since visiting colleges takes time, and in some cases requires travel expenses, use your resources wisely. That means, you should only be visiting colleges that have the characteristics that you think would help you succeed in college.

As you walk around the campus, watch the students and faculty. Do they stop and talk to each other or interact in other ways?

If your tour guide is a current student, feel free to ask him or her some questions about his or her personal experience. Why did they choose to attend this college? Which clubs or organizations do they belong to? What is their major?
·At some point during your visit, stop and take a look around—what is the atmosphere like? Is this a place where you might feel comfortable?

After your visit, write down at least one impression of each area that you visited and see how it compares with the “ideals” that you outlined in your personal profile. For example, if small class size is important to you, consider how many lecture halls you noticed on your tour and how many smaller classrooms you were shown.

The College Interview
While the college interview is your opportunity to tell of your successes or explain any academic difficulties, and to describe the assets that you will bring to the campus if you are accepted, it also is a time for you to ask questions about the college and gather more information. Think of it as your opportunity to interview your interviewer!

Don’t be afraid of asking questions that seem too silly or even too serious—it is the admissions counselor’s responsibility to give you all of the information that you need.


Applying to College
Remember the personal profile that you created in the very beginning of your college search?

Well, as you research and visit different colleges you may change your mind about some of those answers that you originally had. However, when it comes time to apply to colleges, you should only be applying to those that comfortably fit your original or revised profile.



Apply today! Applying on-line automatically
waives your application fee.

After You Are Accepted
Whether you have been accepted to one college or several colleges, it is a good idea to visit the campuses again, perhaps staying overnight this time, just to help you be sure of the school that you are choosing to attend.


Remember, the college search process is not about applying to the “right” college—it is about finding the college that is right for you!

Learn More, Earn More!