Making lists is useful. You will see patterns to what makes lists. As others have posted you can go ad infinitum. just making lists is not enough. With a list rank the items according to current priorities. Then colleges can be explored that best match according to the most important things on the lists. Compromise will be necessary as no college will match all items on any list. Then, be sure to look at finances. Affordability will trump any wish list.
There’s really just three things that drive a college choice:
- Can my kid get in?
- Can I pay for it?
- Does my kid want to go there?
Doesn’t all have to be on the same spreadsheet. But you need to cover all three distinct topics.
Each of the three on its own produces a pretty long list of schools. But when you put all three together, the list becomes quite short and focused.
Some we used:
Net Cost
Number of Undergraduates
Faculty Student Ratio
%of students that live on campus
How big is the department for your major? If you are majoring in something that only has a couple of professors, that does not bode well.
Housing- do they offer all 4 years? freshman only?
Urban/rural/suburban
Is this a commuter school? (do students go home on weekends)
Surrounding area - what is the nearby town/amenities like?
Transportation - how would you get home
AP/IB Credits - can you get credit for AP/IB tests you have taken
Male/Female ratio
Greek life - what % of students are in greek life
Parking
Diversity
Safety
Sports
Jobs - what happens to seniors after they graduate
Internships - depending on your major, is it easy to get internships?
Resident students going home on weekends are usually described as “suitcase” students. “Commuter” students would be those who continue to live where they were living before they started at the school (for traditional-age college students, this usually means continuing to live with their parents).
A reasonable proxy of resident students is the percentage of frosh living in the dorms, since it is likely that most of the others are commuters. Note that overall percentage is less useful, since, at many schools, upper class resident students often live nearby off-campus. However, this does not indicate how many of the resident students are “suitcase” students. It may also be an underestimate if it is common for frosh to live in student-focused off-campus housing (e.g. off-campus dorms not run by the school, fraternities, sororities, co-ops, etc…).
Unfortunately, relatively few schools make public their post-graduation survey results by major.
Let me explain the situation a bit more. DS is a rising junior, great student and has a decent shot at the best colleges. MIT and Caltech are the reach ones, maybe a couple Ivies. He wants a math major, that means pretty much anywhere, and finances are not an issue. Doesn’t want LACs. It still feels like a lot of possibilities for target/safety schools. I’m thinking of starting to visit colleges during the school year, but time is very limited, so we won’t be able to travel too much, and I’m looking for something that will allow us to zero in on the most promising ones.
How advanced is he in math?
If he is highly advanced (i.e. taking math courses more advanced than calculus 2 / calculus BC while in high school), then he may want to pay particular attention to how extensive the junior and senior level math offerings at each school are, and whether graduate level courses and research opportunities will be available to him as an undergraduate.
Is he looking at pure math or some sort of applied math (if the latter, what type of application)? Math is a fairly broad subject at the junior, senior, and graduate level, so checking how well the various subareas are covered may be useful. Also, if he is interested in applied math, offerings in the other relevant subjects of application may need to be checked.
Thank you @ucbalumnus , these are good points. Yes, he took calc BC in sophomore year. He’s also doing research that uses applied math/CS, so I was suggesting applied math, but he’s leaning towards general math so far.
So, he probably needs to be aware of how easy it might be to move into CS if he starts in math and later decides he wants to change.
Typically, CS can either be in the College of L&S or College of Engineering (or both like at Berkeley). Usually at privates it is easier to change from a non-engineering major into CS. But, for example, at CMU it would be very difficult to change from math to CS (though it would be easy to minor in CS).
He sounds similar to my son, except my son is a physics/CS guy who took Calc BC in 10th and started research around 10th.
A criteria we used with our D was the financial health of each prospective college. Forbes magazine’s annual college rankings provide an excellent financial financial grade. Their criteria is explained here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2016/07/06/forbes-2016-financial-grades-is-your-college-financially-fit/#25b1e2ef6e50.
Regardless of what final criteria you come up with and a methodology to come up with your own rankings, suggest you visit the campuses of the top choices if possible. I told our D we could visit her top three out-of-state campuses in a one week period. Nothing like an actual campus visit to solidify choices and confirm what are essentials and what are “nice to have” qualities.
Goodness, we didn’t do any of this (except affordability. We weren’t scientific at all, or just thought about things naturally without spreadsheets. My son applied to one school (an Ivy) because he noticed a student had a key to the theater, and another because he thought the tour guide was cool. Naturally he thought about some other things, and I gave him my input, and I am sure we must have written something down, but it wasn’t that complicated. There was a funny thread here once about reasons kids liked a school…
For the OP does he prefer a Tech. environment, like MIT or Caltech as you mentioned, so that might mean Rensselaer or Worcester Polytech Institute? Or a university like the Ivies or little Ivies (Tufts, Amherst, Williams etc.) Some state U’s have great CS departments.
What part of the country? City or rural? Those are simple filters.
On the other hand, at my alma mater, Cornell, it would be easy to change from one major to the other (provided that you choose your freshman courses carefully so that you can satisfy the prerequisites for both majors).
Cornell is a school that your son might want to check out – at least by doing some online research.