There are two things to remember about coming up with a senior’s college list: most parents’ ideas about universities are at the very least twenty years outdated, and most students are only familiar with a handful of the most recognizable names. Well-intentioned parents can influence their student's ideas about where to go to school in ways that are ultimately not in their kid's best interest.
The list is the first step in giving your student the opportunity to arrive on a campus next fall that is the best match for personality, academic interests, and abilities. Having the right assortment of schools from the beginning ensures that your student will have the best shot at being happy and productive.
Why?
When we come up with a group of prospective schools based on outdated knowledge, misguided ideas about prestige, and misinformation about relative cost, it is all too likely that you won’t come up with the best list. Your student will just need to make do rather than thrive at one of these universities. So, here is my advice for students and parents. These are separate lists, but students and parents should read both of them.
Parents:
1. Update your information. When I was applying to colleges in the early 90’s many of the schools that are now highly selective were much easier to get into, had smaller endowments, and therefore their reputations were modest. Carnegie Mellon, which now boasts some of the best departments in the country, was a shoo-in if you were an above average student. It was the same for New York University, Barnard College, Boston University, Emory, and Rice. But all that has changed. It’s not just because there are more students applying to college. These universities have had large investment in their facilities, faculty, and endowment. They attract better faculty because they have more money to dispense. Departments get better and more prestigious when they have the money to attract the best faculty. The end result: more students apply for a limited number of slots and the school moves into the highly selective or extremely selective category. But people in my generation or older will often come to the table with outdated information that misleads them.
2. Don’t fall prey to prestige myths. If you never knew the school existed, you probably think that the fault is with the school for not being famous enough to be on your radar. You will hear this over and over, and chances are you will disregard the advice unless you understand why this is wrong-headed. If your son or daughter plans on going to graduate or professional school, there is usually data available on a school’s success rates at placing their students in medical, law, or graduate school. I counseled a student who was a devout Christian, and her priorities were a school in a bucolic college town, a faith-centered curriculum, pre-medical course offerings with hands-on opportunities, and a chance to play on an athletic team (but she wasn’t good enough for Division I sports). So, I put together a list that reflected all those priorities. However, her parents' number one choice for her was based on prestige myths derived from people they knew. The school they wanted their child to apply early decision was very urban, secular, was designated Division I for athletics, and did not have the best offerings for the pre-medical track. In other words, they chose the opposite of all of her priorities. The parents preferred the school because they thought since it possessed overall prestige she would have a better chance of getting into a medical school. In fact, there are faith-centered schools with even higher success rates placing their students in medical school. So, what was the point?
3. Look at specific departments and their course offerings. If your son has been volunteering as a teaching assistant, taking education courses at the local community college, and willingly spent two summers teaching disabled children, why would you prioritize a school with no Education major? I had such a case. The student had a mediocre GPA, all 3’s and one 4 on the Advanced Placement exams, and an above average, but not outstanding, SAT score. Where he excelled was in his commitment to education. His parents wanted him at a U.C. because of the system’s reputation—even though no campus offers an Education major. It didn’t make sense to prioritize a public university system with rigid acceptance criteria. The student didn’t meet most of these criteria. Moreover, given the fact that their son had already shown a steadfast commitment to education, it seemed particularly important to be steadfast in pursuing his passion. In the end, given that tuition cost was not an issue for the family, I was able to persuade the parents to apply early decision to a private university. This school stood out because of its very specific course offerings in early childhood development and special education, which were the student's particular focus. The school didn’t meet some of the criteria on the student’s wish list, but it was a better compromise than a U.C. with no education major any way you looked at it.
4. Be clear about cost. As a counselor, one of the first things I have to explain is cost. A fancy private university, like Yale, they assume would have to be prohibitively expensive if an okay school like George Washington University is as costly as it is. That could not be further from the truth. Schools like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Duke all offer zero tuition to students whose household income is under $60-125,000 per year, depending on the school. Some, like Princeton, even pay for room and board. It means that talented students from relatively affluent households, as well as those who are disadvantaged, can attend Princeton for less than it costs to attend community college. Likewise, many small liberal arts colleges and large universities with big endowments offer many of their own scholarships and funding opportunities. The bottom line: don’t choose a school based solely on the sticker price. And definitely don’t make the choice based on assumptions rather than real information.
Students:
1. Do this visualization before anything else. Imagine you are living a day in your ideal college. What does the place you live in look like? Is it a dorm room or a shared apartment? Do you walk or bike to a dining hall to eat breakfast, or do you commute on public transport? Perhaps you are driving the car your parents gave you for your high school graduation. Do you meet friends in a café near campus? What does your campus look like? Does it have modern buildings, red brick, or Gothic? What kind of people do you see on campus? Is it a diverse group of people, or is it more homogenous? What is the weather like as you walk to your first class? Is it cold or warm, sunny or rainy? Do you see trees and manicured lawns around you or are you walking on urban streets to class? When you get to class, how large is the room? Does your professor say hello to you by name or do you slink in anonymously with a hoodie? After you are done with classes, do you go play sports on a team? Or do you share a cab downtown with friends to a play or an art gallery exhibit opening? Do you go study in a big, old-fashioned library or in a café full of hipsters on their MacBooks? Do you go to a gym on campus or at a crunchy neighborhood yoga center? If it’s a weekend night are you heading to a frat or sorority party, partying in a trendy club, or going to a poetry reading in a stately hall?
By the time you finish this exercise you will be ready to create a list of the things that matter to you: urban, rural, or suburban? Cold or warm climate? Modern or traditional campus? Greek or Geek? A university that provides housing in small colleges with their own dining halls or that has big, high rise apartments in the city?
2. Be honest with yourself. Take stock of what you know you like studying and not what you think you should like. If you aren’t certain about what kind of career you will pursue, then think about which activities outside school you enjoy, as well as which subjects you did best in and were effortless for you. If you really love animals and science, then a school like U.C. Davis would be a better match for you than Stanford. Although the latter is ranked overall much higher, Davis has unparalleled offerings in veterinary science and agriculture. If you love literature, then consider a school that has a number of well-developed literature departments, a creative writing program, or a school of journalism. The more course options that exist in your various areas of interest, the more options you will have once you are enrolled as a student.
3. Do the homework for your parents. Provide your parents with information on the department(s) that interests you at a school, the course offerings, and rankings. This kind of hard data will help persuade otherwise obstinate parents to make a choice based on information rather than misinformation or outdated ideas they may have.
4. Get to know your first choice school. Consider going to summer school, if it is offered, at your favorite school. Many schools like Yale, Cambridge, and University of Virginia offer summer programs for high school students. It gives you the opportunity to see if you actually click with a school once you get there. If the courses are taught by regular faculty, it will also give you a chance to do well and get a recommendation from a professor at that school. It’s a win-win proposition.
5. This is about you, not your parents, not your friends. Remember, the next four years are the only, or one of the only, times when you can be this self-centered. At no other point in your life will you have fewer responsibilities or worries. With that in mind, make it the best four years you possibly can by choosing the right place for you. Don’t succumb to the pressure from your friends or parents to apply to schools that don't fulfill most of your criteria.
6. Dream, but be realistic. Realistic does not mean abandoning your criteria and settling for mediocre. It means that your list possesses a range from more selective to less selective. These schools, whether harder or easier for you to get into, reflect all or most of the things that matter to you. If your college list is all Ivy League schools and then two more down-to-earth options that you are ambivalent about, then you don’t have a good list. You should have three or four schools that will be a reach for you either because they are extremely selective or because the average for GPA and exams is either the same as yours, or a little above; two or three that you have a decent chance of getting into, but nothing is sure; and two schools that you have an extremely good chance of being accepted to because your scores and grades are far above the average for that school. There are a number of schools that will be a perfect match for you in all those categories, from your “reach” school to the “safety” school.
a. Be realistic about finances as well. If you find yourself in the awkward situation of having parents who are well-off but don’t want to pay for an expensive private school, and you are under 24, you will not be able to get need-based scholarships or loans. There are exceptions made in certain situations, for example if you were to become orphaned or marry. There are, however, many schools that offer merit-based scholarships regardless how much your parents might earn. If your parents have limited means, then you will qualify for scholarships and loans, but you should think hard before putting yourself into massive debt. 50-60K per year for four years is a lot of money to pay back.
i. Again, there are caveats. If you are going into education or non-profit you can get into a loan forgiveness program where you will pay back the loan through an income-driven repayment program. When ten years of full time employment end, you will be freed of your debt even if you paid back way less than the principal you borrowed. However, if you are working for little outside of education or non-profit, say as an actor, a fine arts painter, or a barista, you will be saddled with the debt for decades. However, you should know that income-driven plans will save you from total ruin by generally only siphoning off 10% of your income. [See the cautionary tales of taking out too much debt in Consumer Reports]
The solution? Chances are you can find a very good public university at a fraction of the cost of a private university or a public university outside your home state. You will come out with minimal to no debt. The worst-case scenario is you spend one or two years in community college to shave off the cost of four full years at an expensive school. Then transfer to a four-year university that meets all your criteria. You may also choose to establish residence in a state with strong public universities, and then apply after you have been living their the required time period (1-2 years, depending). In the meantime you can enroll in community college, get an internship in your prospective field, and work.
7. Don’t eliminate schools because of early deadlines. That’s a terrible reason for weeding out schools. Get organized early so you don’t miss out on what might have been a very good fit.
8. Don’t rule out schools that have funny names. I am not being trying to be cheeky here. Swarthmore, Skidmore, Gonzaga, and Grinnell are all good schools with unfortunate names. A name can affect our opinion unconsciously or consciously.
9. Don’t be afraid to leave your state, your time zone, or even your country. I have a student who really wants to study fashion. The best possible place for her would be in London at Central St. Martin’s, which has turned out more hot young designers than all the other fashion schools combined. However, she and her parents took it off the list because they thought a school in London would be exorbitantly expensive and there was a psychological block to being so far away. The perceived sense of distance and the misinformation about cost would have eliminated her best choice. The reality is that the cost of student housing in London is on par with expensive cities like Berkeley, Palo Alto, and New York City, and the tuition is actually less than their top choices in New York City. As for distance, London is certainly much further away from California than Manhattan, but if the student is only traveling home a few times a year, it doesn't make that much of a difference.
These guidelines help us use reason and data to make the best choices. Choosing colleges is as much an emotional as an academic decision. Today more parents evaluate how well they did as parents by the reputation of the college that their children will be attending. For students, it also sets an indelible mark on the beginning of their journey to adulthood. You and your student can collaborate on this together and help each other make a list that reflects your student’s abilities, personality, and academic interests. Ultimately, finding colleges that fulfill these three categories is what will allow your student to thrive in college and beyond.