Whether you are heading into senior year and putting the finishing touches on your college list or just starting your college research as a sophomore or junior, many students are wondering WHY, WHEN, and HOW to build the college list. 

WHY?

By fall of your senior year, you will want to have built a list of 6-12 schools that are the right personal, academic, and financial fit. You can’t do that well until you understand what you are looking for, so here are my tips for your first steps in gathering information.

WHEN?

It is hard to build a college list until you see some campuses in person so you can get a sense for personal fit. The best way to do that is to schedule a handful of campus tours the summer before or early in junior year. Now is a great time to sit down as a family to map out big and small trips through the next twelve months. 

HOW? 

Before you get too deep into thinking about your “dream” college, see a few places to get yourself oriented and figure out basic likes and dislikes. The key is to keep an open mind and pay attention to what you respond to on different campuses.

CTK Pro Tip: try not to EVER have a “dream” college– there are plenty of fish in the old sea!

What types of colleges should I visit?

Start local. Don’t worry about flying all over the country. At this stage, just pick a handful of schools that are easy to get to. Ideally, see at least one of each of these: 

• Small or medium size school in a remote area (e.g. Kenyon, Ursinus, Hamilton, Elon, Dartmouth)

• Small or medium size school connected to a college town (e.g. Skidmore, Loyola Maryland, University of Vermont, SUNY New Paltz) 

• Large or very large school (e.g. Penn State, UConn, Rutgers, UC San Diego)

PRO TIP: Compare urban campuses: if you like cities or think you might like cities, see at least two urban campuses, one with a campus center and one at which the campus is more integrated into the city. Think Columbia vs. NYU in New York or UPenn vs. Temple in Philadelphia or American vs. George Washington in Washington D.C.

Do Your Research and Take Detailed Notes:

STEP ONE: Before a scheduled tour, read up on the school:

• Look at your profile on the scattergrams in your high school software (e.g. SCOIR, Naviance, Cialfo) to understand where you fall in the pool of accepted students. 

• Read up on campus life by checking out the school’s web site, reading a paper guide like the Fiske Guide to Colleges, or clicking through the school’s Common Data Set to get the latest admissions data.

• Consider which factors matter to you by working through this FREE CTK DOWNLOAD: list of college research questions.

STEP TWO: Take notes during and after your tour:

• Jot notes on your phone on tour and ask casual questions of your tour guide. Some questions we often ask are these: 

• Is it hard to get housing off campus?

• Who do you hang out with? 

• Where are you and your friends getting internships? 

• What is the food like? 

• How do you get around campus/off campus if you don’t have a car? 

• Take more formal notes after the tour. You will use these later as you sort through what you like and plan for future visits, you also will use them as you write your “Why X School?” essays many colleges request.

FREE DOWNLOAD: Copy this CTK college tracking spreadsheet and modify it to focus on your most important factors for academics, personal interest, cost, career support, and admissions.

CTK Pro Tip: Assign each school a personal fit rating, e.g. 4/5 stars or a grade on an A-F scale. Your gut response can be very helpful later when you start to sort schools. 

Advice for Students with Specialized Interests

Apply the above advice in your own context. If you are an engineer, DON’T waste your time visiting campuses without ABET-certified engineering programs. If you are an artist and know you want an art school and not an art major within a liberal arts program, focus on those. DO make sure that the time you spend on campus is targeted:

• Some schools will offer additional meetings with specific departments, e.g. business or new media 

• You may be able to schedule an interview or portfolio review with a member of admissions, attend a class, or even do a specialized one-day admissions process, e.g. as at Bard

• Some schools offer a major-specific information session before or after the tour. 

• If you are a recruited athlete, your sport may drive this college search process more than any other factor, but ensure your college can pass the broken-leg test. 

Do Colleges Offer Support for Learning Differences?

More students than ever before come to campus with the need for learning accommodations. Some students need an accommodation for note taking or extra time on tests; others might need a more extensive overall accommodation that encompasses several supports. 

Whether it is a school set up for autism support specifically, or more generally for ADHD and other learning differences, there are questions you should ask the school as you are researching and touring:

• Does the student need to apply for a specialized support program, like SALT at Arizona State, or may anyone use support services?

• If a student is seeking support services, does the student need to provide medical documentation?

• Do the services require an additional fee?

• Which services are available and how accessible are they? Is there a limit to how many sessions or services the student can take advantage of? 

• Is there a pre-college program or onboarding program at the school?

Mistakes to Avoid when Starting to Visit Campuses

• Don’t start with a tour of Ivy league/highly selective schools. This sets up unreasonable expectations, even for the most competitive students. 

• Don’t see your “top” schools first, whatever they are. Warm up on schools that are just there for research. They will give you great comparison points, and you don’t want to find yourself chatting with an admissions officer from one of your target schools before you are really ready. 

• Don’t delay research until the student is a senior. As a parent in a family of four kids with two working parents, I completely understand the time and money constraints, but do yourself a favor and see a few accessible places early in the process just so you can have informed conversations. 

• Pop into a college while you are driving to a sports competition or summer vacation, 

• Team up with a friend to take turns with kids, and 

• Look for open days in the school calendar that you can block out on your work calendar. 

• Don’t fall in love with just one school. These days, numerous selective schools have acceptance rates below 10%, so even very high-achieving students will face disappointment if they decide only one school will make them happy. 

Research Schools for Personal, Academic, and Financial Fit After you Have Seen First Schools:

After you have seen a few colleges and universities, think hard about what you liked and did not like. You will likely see some patterns. For example, you might like only urban schools or only small schools. You might find that you like different things at different places, but that having a campus with high levels of diversity matters most to you more than anything. 

The next step is to take the information you have and give these questions a good look:

1. Building the college list for academic fit– Where does my student have a chance of being admitted?

2. Building the college list for personal fit– Where will my student have the best environment, social fit, and choice of study?

3. Building the college list for cost– Which colleges will net a price that our family can afford to pay?  

We put together a three-part parent series on building the list for academic, personal, and financial fit. Each recording is about 30 minutes of information with an additional 30 minutes of Q&A with parents and includes all the resources I reference.

Use code 20-OFF at checkout, and receive 20% off any recording.

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