Choosing a College

By this point you should have an idea of what you would like to do and how to prepare for it. Does your career of interest require college, trade or technical school or even apprenticeship, a topic we'll investigate in the future? For those who require a college degree, the biggest dilemma which now presents itself is which college to choose. An invaluable book which I've referenced in the past is, Choosing a College by Dr. Thomas Sowell. The book doesn't seem to be available from Amazon.com but you may be able to find it in the library. (You remember the library, that brick building somewhere near the center of town with those pre-Kindle paper things called books!?!) Dr. Sowell is a brilliant economist who is quite prolific in writing about economics, education and history. As stated previously, the book was first published in 1989. While some of the information about specific schools is dated, the philosophy and technique underlying the college choice process is relevant and that's the major purpose of the book.

There are numerous resources available to help you in your search. Since I wrote about the College Board in the last post outlining use of PSAT results, I'll begin with that. There are many features of www.collegeboard.com that are excellent resources for students, parents and education professionals. The college search and match features are well worth investigating. If you know of a college in which you're interested, you can search it by name and get a complete profile of one of over 3,500 schools. If you haven't a clue or only have a school or two that you know of, use the college match feature. You are asked a series of questions which, based on your responses, will match you with specific schools that meet your preferences as to size, cost, majors and a host of relevant characteristics. You can then use the list of results to further refine your choices.

An excellent feature on this site is the side by side comparison. You can compare up to four colleges at one time. Once you put in the names, a one page "side by side comparison" results which gives you location, admissions criteria, size and cost. In addition, there is the "How do I stack up?" feature which lets you put in personal information as to your grades and test scores and results in a comparison of how you "stack up" against the competition at that school. You can save all of these results in a personal account which you can set up free of charge as a PSAT/SAT taker. This site is definitely a keeper!