Our spreadsheet has the following categories, depending on what’s important to you, yours may be different.
Number of Undergrads
Business Direct Entry?
Net Price
Full Cost
Acceptance Rate
Avg Test Scores
% Submitting Test Scores
Interview?
ED % of Class
Fraternity %
4 yr Grad Rate
6 yr Grad Rate
Residency Requirement
This is what we have for S25, D23’s was a little different and as she received acceptances, we added things like merit amount, AP credits, merit requirement (like GPA), distance from airport.
S25 was also not into the research part, or really only very casually interested in what his friends had to say about different places. We were getting nowhere with a plan. His spreadsheet has a bit less detail at this point because he really had no clue where to start or what he wanted, so we started with really, really broad categories. We realized after watching his friends go through this over the past two years that we needed to get a headstart because the guidance office at his school does not offer much support for juniors at all.
On his spreadsheet, he has to score schools on a 1-10 scale and indicate if he thinks a visit is worth it, or if he plans to do any coach outreach. The sheet has a tab each for likelies, matches/targets, and reaches, as well as one tab for consolidating those he’d like to explore further. The categories right now are:
Academic programs of interest
Size
Location (geography/distance/travel)
Location (setting)
Social scene
Describe a few things that jumped out at you about this school (this was my way of making sure he went past the niche info and dug a little deeper)
Athletics
Score total
He’s used niche and the Fiske guide so far, but his list is still very much a work in progress, since who knows what will happen with him sports-wise. I had some broad ideas of what he was looking for (eg., it was a fight to get him to research places with fewer than 2000 students) and populated the spreadsheet with about 50-60 schools that I’d read about here and from reading Fiske cover-to-cover. I did some deeper dives on teams as well as on CDSs to make sure that even if they were academically potential fits, that athletically he wasn’t totally off the mark or vice versa (tbh, much has changed on that front now, because, well, life happened in the interim and his perspective has shifted a bit). It was a fun exercise and it at least gave him a starting point to start really thinking about some big picture stuff. In building it there were a bunch of times when I had to evaluate if I was putting a school on there because I liked it or if it was because I thought he would like it, so that was a good exercise for me too.
I think the sheet will change a lot over the next 6 months, and for sure we’ll add more detail and info to keep things straight as his impressions, needs, hopes, and interests change.
One of my best memories of this process with D23 was ordering Thai food and sitting with a big printed out copy of her spreadsheet for her final choice discussion with her dad and I. It was a long and stressful process but at the end it felt like we had accomplished a lot and had come a long way from her first college visit when she was judging schools by their colors.
None of my three stopped judging schools based on color preference. They, all, were able to find schools whose colors (and everything else) was acceptable.
Lots of colleges forbid smoking on campus. In fact, it may even be the case that most of them do, given the number of state laws mandating that all public colleges (and, in the case of at least Iowa, all colleges, whether public or private) are nonsmoking.
This is totally me! And my kids are night and day, so I’m trying to adjust to what my 2025 wants and needs. My 2023 was all about me researching. We had a great system where she would feed me ideas and I’d be in my glory researching then report back and adjust as needed. My 2025 will want me to be much more hands off. There has been a lot of tongue biting already. Lol It will all work out in the end!
Our spreadsheet has these categories:
Name of school
Majors offered you are interested in
What “College of” (e.g. the major you are interested in is in the College of Physical Science or College of Liberal Arts and Sciences etc)
City, State
Climate
Type of location
Student body size - undergrad/grad
Tuition + Room & Board
Quality of Life index (from Fiske)
SAT/ACT mid-50% range
Acceptance rate for men
Availability of sport (my older son rowed crew, some schools had clubs, some were D3, some had nothing)
Other/Notes from Visits
EA/RD application deadline
Then there’s a different spreadsheet/checklist for once he’s decided on schools and we’re putting together applications. Of course, we’re not there yet at all, but I’m modeling it after what I did for my S22.
Name of School
First and second choice of major
EA/RD Deadline
Application Fee - (1) amount (2) has it been paid?
Accept Common App?
Common App Essay Complete? (if no, what is internal deadline to complete)
Other supplemental essays req’d?
If yes to other essays, are they complete? (if no, what is internal deadline to complete)
HS transcript submitted?
Are test scores required? Do we want to submit?
Have test scores been submitted?
Has letter of rec been requested? Deadline provided to recommender?
Is a resume or activities list upload requested? If so, has it been uploaded?
Is there an honors college that you want to apply to? If so: (1) what’s the application deadline; (2) are essays required; (3) internal deadline to write essay; (4) is essay submitted?
My kid just texted from school how much they love “X” school (a meets-need private with price tag above $80k. We do not have demonstrated need.) Ummm…what?! We haven’t visited this school in 5 years (tagged along with older sibling visit.) And I thought we had an agreement that full-price elite schools aren’t worth it for undergrad!!! Oh no. Pray for me.
After a solid fall semester (one B, the rest As in some tough courses), S25 lost his grip on his grades a bit this last quarter (sport practices/games kicked in right around the time his workload intensified and he missed some homework assignments and flubbed a couple of tests). He working late most nights and running on fumes. So I canceled the spring college tour and let him relax over break, hoping that he’d return to school this week energized and ready to focus for the last big push. Instead…he came down with COVID this past weekend. It was a light case and the school told us to send him back when he was asymptomatic, so he only missed three days. But I think maybe he went back a day too early…just in time to bomb an in-class English essay. He was so tired and cranky…
I’m so frustrated by how on-the-knife’s-edge this whole year feels. I know in the grand scheme of things that he’s a smart kid with resources and good health if he blooms a little late, he’ll still be fine. The stakes just aren’t that high. But they feel high. We got excited about schools like Kenyon and Oberlin. But he probably needed to make straight As (or close to it) this quarter for those schools to be realistic. It’s not going to happen. Dagnabbit…
They, all, were able to find schools whose colors (and everything else) was acceptable.