Making Final College Choices
The final decision of where to attend school is often the hardest part of the admissions process. Some students find themselves filled with doubt and unable to choose. Here is a college choosing checklist with tips to help make that final choice a bit easier.
Stay as calm as possible. While it is a very important decision, allowing yourself to become overwhelmed with anxiety won’t help you make the better choice. Be sure to give yourself some breathing room. Don’t rush your decision–you have until May 1 to make your final choice. Doing something fun or relaxing can help you de-stress a bit and make it easier to decide. If you ever feel pressure from family or friends, ask them to respect that you’re still deciding.
Start with YOU, not the colleges. Being honest with yourself is vital. Be realistic about your needs, goals, preferences, etc. Try to make a list of the top characteristics you hope to find in your future school. It’s better to be as specific as possible, and try to focus on quantifiable factors (cost, size, location, academics) and intangibles (social fit, reputation, campus atmosphere). This list is about what YOU think is important–not anyone else. Once you have your list, rank each characteristic by its importance to you. Don’t worry about which colleges match up yet, instead spend time listening to your head and heart about how you visualize your college experience.
Evaluate each college separately. It’s natural to want to immediately start comparing colleges to each other, but don’t jump right into that. It’s better to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each school individually based on the characteristics you listed in the previous tip. Do as much research as you can on each school to get a well-rounded idea of strengths and weaknesses. Research can include visiting campus, reviewing the school’s website, talking with admissions or chatting with students who attend there. And don’t forget to factor in your gut instinct about each college too.
Narrow your options. After making your lists and weighing strengths and weaknesses, you’ll likely find a few of your options don’t quite fit with you anymore. It’s okay to let these schools go and remove them from your list. In the end, you can only attend one school, so “letting go” is a hard, but necessary step in the process.
Compare your remaining choices in pairs. Still having a hard time deciding? A good way to clarify your options is to compare them in groups of two, rather than trying to compare them all at once. A tournament-style bracket could be helpful here! Start with two schools, see which one matches more of your top qualities and the winner moves forward. In the end, you should have two schools that met most of your top qualities. Another tip during this process is to do the coin flip test. When comparing School A with School B, if School A meets more criteria and moves forward, but you were hoping for it to be School B, you know that School B is what you really wanted. We like to call this the coin flip test because while a coin is flipping in the air, you usually know what you want–and you can tell by how you feel when heads or tails is read, and you’re happy or sad with the outcome.
Understand that there are no perfect choices, just DIFFERENT ones. Making the final decision is the last step in a very long and tiring process. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you have to be absolutely 100% certain that you’ve chosen the perfect school to guarantee your future happiness and success. In the end, there is no perfect school, and there are never any guarantees of your success. Your college experience is going to be defined more by your approach to college life than by the actual school you attend. Once you’ve made your decision, go forward with confidence (and excitement!!) that you’ve made a great choice.