College Searching/Advice Seeking

ucbalumnus
Fri, 24 Apr 2020 19:48:00 +0000

Lots of people posting here may have suggestions.

As far as “fit” goes, consider what you and your son consider important:

A. Cost (net price after financial aid grants or scholarships) and related matters (e.g. would financial aid change based on anticipated family financial changes or other kids entering or leaving college, or would some merit scholarships have a high risk of loss due to high GPA requirements to renew or limitations on changing major, etc.?).

B. Academic content, such as major availability (including whether there is a difficult or competitive secondary admission process to major after enrolling), required major and general education courses, available electives in and out of major, content and rigor within courses, external accreditation for major or courses for specific post-graduation goals (if applicable), preparation for and success rates for any external licensing exams for specific post-graduation goals (if applicable), special features like co-op programs or study abroad, etc…

C. The experience and environment, such as class sizes, class formats, instructor types (tenure-track versus adjunct versus TA), residential versus commuter, whether residential students tend to live on campus or not (or only in frosh year), weather, distance from home, region or location, aspects of the surrounding neighborhood, extracurricular activities, religion, fraternities and sororities, level of alcohol (or other recreational drug) use, study abroad programs, etc…

D. Prestige, alumni network, and similar name-related effects.