Choosing A College:
Choosing a college may be one of the most important decisions of your life. You are looking to find a school that makes sense academically and socially to the student but one that also makes financial sense to the parents. When looking for a college, here are some items to consider:
1. Is this school well known for what you wish to major in?
2. Do you want a small, medium, or large campus?
3. Do you want Division I sports or certain clubs?
4. Do you want Fraternities or Sororities?
5. How far from home do you wish to be?
6. Is there a certain religious affiliation you are wanting?
7. Do they offer internships, or study-abroad programs?
Once you get a large list of schools that meet your needs as the student both academically and socially, then you have to start to dwindle the list down based on financial factors. You should then be looking at that list of schools to reference whether they will give you Need-Based Aid. And if so, will they fully meet your need or only partially? Will they give you mostly FREE money or will it be mostly loans and work-study? Will they give you money for your ACT score and GPA? Will the school allow you to bring in outside scholarship money or if you spend time finding outside money will they reduce down the aid they were going to give you anyway? Once you cross reference all these items against the original list that had what you wanted in a campus, then you should be left with a more manageable number. Then you should send away for the brochures on these campuses and research them online. You should narrow these down to 5-7 that you will apply for admission and then you should go visit at least your top 3 schools.
In order to do all this and be successful, you will need to start thinking what you want to be in your Freshman/Sophomore year of High School. Once you find out all these items about the campuses in your Sophomore/ Junior year, then come August 1st of your Senior Year of High School, you are getting those applications completed for college admissions. By doing the process in this manner, you do not waste your precious time and money applying for admission and traveling around and visiting campuses that will not do anything for you financially. Remember, you cannot paint your child into a corner and have them go somewhere just because they made a good financial aid offer, if that school has nothing that the student wants in a campus. On the other hand, no matter how bad a student wants to attend a certain school, if Mom and Dad cannot afford it, that will not work either. Choosing a college is about a marriage between what the student wants academically and socially and what the parents need financially to make it work.