The Search Itself

All too often counselors and educators hear this:  “I want to go to XYZ University because it is the best school for ___________.”  This statement sometimes begs for the response of “Says whom? By whose standards?”  The following cannot be stated firmly enough: The “best” school may not be the best school for you. 

The belief that the more famous a college is the better the college is a myth.  The “best” school for you may be one that you had never heard of before the college application process began.  Higher selectivity does not necessarily mean superior quality education.  While many alumni insist that their years in Ivy League or equivalent institutions were worth the all-nighters and the extracurricular efforts that it took to get there, studies show that these super-school graduates are no more successful down the road (whether success is measured by earnings or self-proclaimed satisfaction) than those from less prominent places. Truth is, there are hundreds of colleges and universities with different campus cultures and high academic standards all over America that are bound to provide a good match. You shouldn’t be limited to the few that you have initially heard of.   There is nothing wrong with wanting to be rewarded for all you have achieved in high school, but there is no sense applying to a tough, highly selective school simply for the prestige involved.  Nor is it productive for you to invest lots of time and energy applying to colleges where your admission is highly unlikely. We want you to be realistic about the options available to you, and we want to guide students to develop college lists that will produce many choices after college decisions are made.  While we encourage students to “reach” for the tougher schools on their lists, we focus primarily on those colleges that provide a good match, both in terms of their appeal to the student and the student’s reasonable prospects for admission. The ideal college setting is one that offers the student a challenging and inspiring, yet comfortable campus culture, and provides an appropriate fit with the student’s own interests and goals.

The search process is definitely up to you. You find out what programs, artistic and academic, are available. What extra-curricular opportunities and campus environments you desire. Finding and choosing a college is a matter of making a perfect fit between the person, place, people, program and price. The process of choosing a college progresses in stages: Exploration, Investigation, Application, and Decision-making.