What do you want to know? Are you asking for college suggestions in the middle of 10th grade? If so, we need more info…like…size of college, public vs private, religious vs secular, urban/suburban/rural, geographic location preference in this country, weather?
Since you have plenty of time, I would suggest as a next step trying to visit a variety of types of college (ETA: see thumper1’s post for some common variables to consider). This can just be a sampling near where you live, in fact. Even if some of those colleges don’t get serious consideration for other reasons, you might learn a lot about what you like, don’t like, and so on. This can help you then meaningfully focus your search.
Please do not think about specific colleges as a sophomore. Instead the focus should be on:
–Doing as well as you can in the most rigorous courseload you can comfortably manage. Take four years of English, Math, Science (including bio, chem, and physics), and SS and three to four years of a foreign language.
– Get involved in ECS you care about and work to make meaningful contributions.
–Enjoy your friends and family.
–Study to improve standardized test scores (maybe look at the ACT as well).
–In terms of college planning, first understand any limits your parents may have (ex. budget, geographic, religious affiliation, etc.). Then learn about the different types of colleges out there – your desires may change over the next couple of years but it is helpful to know what is out there.
I’d prefer a small, private, secular college, in the northeast, preferably urban or suburban. But you are probably right in that it’s silly to look for schools when I’m only a sophomore and have yet to take the SAT. I just prefer being prepared for any situation.
Just something to keep in mind, but this can be a popular wish list among academically well-qualified applicants, making many of those schools relatively hard admits, and also relatively unlikely to offer a lot of merit.
Which doesn’t automatically mean you have to give up on the idea, but you might also want to put some thought into which of those things are the highest priorities, so you can identify some other colleges that at least would offer the things that matter most to you.
And you should also be having a frank, detailed discussion with your parents about cost. You said “N/A” to the budget question, but not infrequently it turns out that parents either don’t really know what they might be looking at in terms of cost, or they decide they will pay certain amounts for some colleges but not others. If your parents can truly offer you a blank check for whatever college you choose, that’s great, but just make sure that is actually something they can and will offer.
That’s my bad on the budget part, I meant that I would just take out student loans or something along the. lines of that since I don’t believe my parents would pay for much beyond what they set aside in an account for me, of which I don’t even know how much money is in it.
OK, so there is only so much you CAN take out in student loans, and it is generally advisable not to take out too much for college, particularly if you might be interested in costly advanced degrees (medical, law, or so on).
You don’t have to decide any of this now, but this is going to need to be a critical part of your process. You’ll need to find out exactly how much your parents actually can and will contribute, and then you can start looking at what are called Net Price Calculators at various colleges. These will give you an estimate of what you might be able to get in need-based aid, and they might include loans and work-study as part of the estimated package. Note until you are in the right application cycle, these could be underestimating your costs.
You’re going to then need to find some good colleges for your application list that you are sure will be affordable and will admit you. You can also apply to some which might not be affordable with only need aid, but where you might realistically get enough merit to close the gap (which is a whole other topic in terms of how to investigate it). But unless it is automatic merit (which again some colleges have, but many don’t), you can’t count on those colleges being affordable.
Again, one practical implication of all this is you might have to bend a bit on some of your preferences. Or maybe not, it just depends. But this is part of why it can be helpful to be reflecting on priorities, and maybe doing some visits if possible to help you decide on priorities.
I brought both my kids on tours of colleges at the end of 10th grade to get an idea of different sorts of colleges- 1 medium suburban, 1 more urban and STEM focused (they are both stem kids), and 1 large state flagship. Then I let it all marinate! These were all convenient to our house or easy to access for other reasons (near relatives, etc.). I put no pressure on the tours, etc. I thought it was helpful. We talked about what felt right, or not and some questions did come up. We started more serious visits in later Jr fall and beyond.
Yeah, I feel like some people think you already have to have a good idea of what you want before visiting, and indeed they may start with just the colleges they think they will like the most. But actually, that is kinda backward in the sense that you want visiting to be useful in informing what you would do if you end up having to make some tradeoffs, which is pretty common. And you might even be surprised at things you end up liking more than you thought you would.
The problem is visiting far away colleges can be expensive, but again you can get lots of great insights out of visits locally, or when visiting some other area anyway, and so on.
It is too early - to look at specific names but not to talk to mom/dad about budget.
While you want small and in the NE, my son’s first college visit was IU. Why ? They have or had a day designed for us sophomores. So even though it’s large and not the NE, I’d go if it’s happening (haven’t missed it). It’s great to see school types you may not like because a lot of opinions change. And oh by the way - who’s awesome in Poli Sci ? I U.
But college can be $20-100k a year so never bad to start talking with mom and dad about what you can afford. And if you are planning on grad school, like law, know the costs per year will only increase afterward.
Check back in a year and if the family travels, even if not to the NE, nothing wrong with walking some campuses - large, midsize and small, urban and not a to get some perspective.
Cost constraints are typically the most important factor in college selection for students going to college immediately after high school. If you have not talked to your parents about college budget, please do so before looking at colleges.
Well…your federally funded loan limit for freshman year is $5500. Anything above and beyond that amount will need to be either taken out by your parents or co-signed by them. Are they on board with that?
The new federally funded student loan limit is $200,000 TOTAL which would include both undergrad and grad school loans. They cannot exceed $50,000 a year. You mention the “legal field”. Law school will likely cost you $100,000 a year…so just keep that in mind.
Please take this to heart. It’s heartbreaking to read the number of posts on Reddit/parent posts on Facebook of people who are disappointed with their college choices, inevitably followed by something along the lines of “what was the point in just working so hard for 4 years and not having fun?” Even if you do get into your top choice -you’re only a teenager once. (In my older child’s year, a student turned down an MIT admission to go to one of his safeties because he was just so burnt out and didn’t want to grind anymore.) By all means work hard, but please enjoy your time at high school too.
One issue is that there is a strict limit on how much you can take out in student loans without an adult cosigner. The limit is small enough that it really does not make much of a dent in the total cost of some universities. It also is possible to get part way through a degree and discover that you are not able to borrow enough additional debt to graduate. You need to be careful about this.
The second issue is that having student debt can be a very significant constraint on what a person can do after graduating university.
As one example of the latter, we set strict limits on what we would pay for university, and would not allow our daughters to take on any debt at all for their bachelor’s degree. When she was a senior in high school, our older daughter was frustrated by this. Two of the universities that she got into were just not affordable based on our budget. She went to a university that was affordable, got a very good education, did well, and graduated on budget with no debt. Then she got a dream job that paid badly (they could pay badly because it was that attractive of a job). She could only take the dream job because she had no debt. This led to a second job that helped her get experience that was very, very valuable to help her get admitted to very good graduate programs. On her second job she still could only afford to support herself because she had no student debt. She then got accepted to several doctoral programs, and was able to graduate with her doctorate (in veterinary medicine) without having to take on excessive debt (we helped her with the cost of her doctorate, which we could do because both daughters had gotten their bachelor’s degree either on-budget or well under budget).
One important point here is that sticking to a budget can open up opportunities in the future that might not be available if you have a large amount of student loan debt to pay off.