Applying to college always seem more complex than it is when you’re in the middle of it.
There is always so much noise when high school juniors and seniors approach the application process. There are checklists, deadlines, opinions from teachers and parents, standardized tests…the list goes on.
When that all settles, the college application experience becomes invaluable insight that can help future applicants better navigate the process. One of our high school interns, Sharon Shin, reflects back on her college search approach, hoping it will help you with yours in the future:
In the beginning of my senior year, my English teacher handed out college criteria checklists to our class. It was a list of questions that aimed to help us understand what kind of colleges we would want to attend.
I remember reading the checklist to myself and feeling confused since I had never thought about it before. Did I want to be in an urban city or in a rural little town? Would I be happier surrounded by thousands of students everyday or only a couple hundred? Did I want to go out-of-state or stay in my home state? Would I thrive better in a co-educational environment or at a single sex college? With so many choices and questions to ask myself, I found myself changing my college list everyday. Looking back, I think it was completely normal for me to be indecisive about the future.
It was my first real adult decision: my college selection was not something that could be done without much thought. I began my college search browsing through college ranking websites, both national and liberal arts. Based on my GPA and my SAT scores, I started to get a feel of which colleges I was academically suited for. I also scrolled through hundreds of forum pages about life at many of these colleges, determining whether the college atmosphere was for me. Lastly, if I had the chance, I visited the college to learn more about it.
While the ranking list was a helpful tool to discover colleges based on academic reputation, I wanted to make sure it was a good fit for me. Could I see myself at this school? Did students have opportunities to get to know their professors? How large were the class sizes? Asking myself more specific questions helped me filter out many of the general colleges I had chosen, regardless of their rank.
Once I started narrowing the list of colleges I shown a little interest in, I did research on each school individually. Did I like the city or town the college was in? How was the campus food’s quality? What were the dorms like? Understanding the school that I could potentially attend was crucial because I could see myself enjoying the school socially and academically.
Based on an internal Q&A, I slowly used the process of elimination until I had about fifteen colleges left. With a variety of safety, target, and reach schools, I had a college list I was comfortable with.
As I started working on my college application essays, I did eventually drop some schools and add new ones. Like I said, it’s completely reasonable for me to be indecisive about my future, because I was still learning about what I liked and didn’t like. So, be flexible, trust your instincts, and good luck!
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