I’d love to get some input from you all on putting together a really useful spreadsheet when deciding on college choice. I’ve written out a spreadsheet for my son (he’s still sleeping and I’m obsessing).
I’ve listed the most important things-
Cost
Academics-and broken that down further by major, flexibility to switch etc
Professor access
Student support services
Opportunities- internship, research
Reputation
Location
Campus
Dorms
Study abroad
LGBTQ support
I know this is really personal but some things are universally important obviously- academics!
Just wondering if anyone has a value system for each of these elements.
I think there might have been something up thread a while back
My daughter and I followed sbinaz’ advice, we brainstormed absolutely everything that might matter, no matter how big or small, on a whiteboard. Then I had her assign each item an importance level 0 to 5, with 5 being most important. (These are the weights.)
In a spreadsheet (without looking at the weights) I had her assign a ranking 1 to 5 for each thing, for each school. Then I added the weights so we could get a weighted total score for each school.
All of this didn’t give an “answer” but it helped her clarify how she could potentially think about her choices. She thought it was very useful.
We have a similar list. In fact, I am having my daughter create her own pro/con list for her final 2-3 choices and indicate which categories she weighs most heavily. She needs to also include out-of-pocket cost and loan burden. I’ve also asked her to see what she can find out about grad school placements, employment after graduation. I really wish colleges would give median income for grads and not just mean. A couple of ultra wealthy grads can totally skew the mean.
Under academic, she’s looking not only at major, but also at research professors are doing and if they have student opportunities. She learned at one college most research was for STEM, but she’s likely to be in a non-STEM field. At a different college there were options.
Also under academics, the gen ed can give you a sense of the college’s values. I think that could be useful to my D too, although the SLACs seem pretty similar.
Added: How I would do it would be to first make a heat map. That means a table comparing each college on each of the criteria and highlighting for each where it hits for her. Leave it unhighlighted if it’s a con. Oh, and I asked her to tell me how she’s weighting things. So she should sort the categories by most to least important.
My daughter asked me to assign the weights but I made her do it. It was eye opening to me to see what she thought was important, it didn’t always align with what I expected, and I think it was really important for her to think about and understand.
Also, we went through this process twice. The first time was just to see how it worked and whether it helped her thought process. When doing the rankings we realized we still had some specific questions that would affect her scoring (e.g. how would study abroad actually work with her major at one of her choices?), so it was helpful just for that.
After a few days of thought and a bit more research she modified both the weights and some of the rankings. Only then did she make any decisions - she ruled one school out because on both the first pass and the second pass it was trailing the others a fair bit.
I’m reading all the ideas for weighting and taking notes for when my D26 may have to do this. She would weight dorms highly (esp opportunity for single rooms and private or at least pod bathrooms). Oh, and food! Quality of food is important to her.
When it came down to two very comparable schools (Emory or Rice) for my D22, I posted a thread here at CC asking for advice. And oh my goodness, there was nearly a brawl as people debated which one had the better reputation, LOL. We still laugh about it.
All that said, it came down to gut feeling for her. It made more sense on paper for her to choose the school that was closer to us for several logical reasons – she hates to fly, the closer school was probably slightly better for her major, she loves our local city, etc.
But her entire gut was telling her to choose the out-of-state school, so she did. It was the right choice.
I’ve also heard often that you can flip a coin – and if you’re disappointed in the results, then that gives you your answer.
At one point, my mom went to some parent night at school for my sister and I. They did a brief 1980s version of “don’t let your kids do homework in front of the TV” study skills. Worried, my mom went up to the teacher after the talk and said “oh no, my kids do all the things you listed”. The teacher replied “whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. Your kids are fine.”
I always studied with music on, all through HS and college.
Turns out, I had undiagnosed ADHD all that time, and having something for my brain to actively filter out makes it easier for me to focus on the thing I should be doing, even if it’s not my favorite thing.
That’s what I told my daughter, as well, about the matrix! It is just a tool, it’s not the answer, and if it is telling you something different from what your heart says, listen to your heart. (Within budget of course!)
I mean, everyone here knows by now that net annual cost is crazy high on my and C25’s weighting. (Though not the highest! Having a good curriculum in fields of interest was, it turns out, an example of one that ranked higher.)
But that’s us. Everyone else, the weighting will be different.
Thank you for your kind words. When I told her that I’d been talking about her choices on CC she wanted to see what people said. She got to your post and was touched.
That is so sweet. I love the supportive environment on CC and am glad to be a small part of it.
Also, the parallels are a little freaky. My son is a bio major with neuro concentration. He was also accepted at Midd when he thought he would major in languages. He also really struggled with what he would major in until he took Bio his second semester in college.
I can’t wait to hear what she decides. If she has questions reach out and I will ask my son to chat with her.
Is anyone still waiting for admission decisions? We are STILL waiting for USNA and USAFA. Decisions have been trickling out according to the Serviceacademyforum, My feelings are at this point he may get a waitlist. He opened his applications last June/July!!!
Also waiting for AFROTC decision which was postponed although he doesn’t care and would not take it. First choice now is USMMA and it has just bee granted a ton of money to be invested in it and is kind of in the spotlight right now.
@Pnwfamily here’s one more parallel- I was also a bio major, concentration in neuroscience! (Also went in undecided- I hadn’t liked bio in HS but I was pre-med so took it anyway). Thank you for the offer to chat- I’ll ask D25.
Yay!! Congrats to your daughter! Please feel free to DM me anytime with questions. If your daughter wants to reach out to my daughter, let me know and I can give you her contact info.
Im a more tactile person. I would take 4 different colored post it notes and write each final choice on each color and have them rank based on Cost, Program, Location, and Vibe. Line them up under each other. There is just something about seeing and touching the names that makes it more personal over a spreadsheet of data. Then start taking away the ones at the bottom of most of those 4 lists. Keep it simple with fewer criteria.
My daughter included access to smaller class sizes in her major. When looking at her top 2, one woukd give her small classes year one with kids in her major, the other wouldn’t be until year 3. The idea of having 200-400 people in your classes for your major for the first 2 years was not appealing to her. That was the tipping point for her, even though the large class school was higher ranked for her major and overall.
She also had a spread sheet that compared cost, scholarships, aspects of school overall, and how much credit she could get from dual credit and ap.
That’s a good point about class sizes. You’ve also made me think about how difficult (or not) it is to get into the classes she wants. We went on a tour at one place where the guide raved about how great a particular program was and how amazing the professors are. But then she said it was so popular that to keep classes small, it became competitive just to get in a class. Students had to interview with faculty to get a seat. It was a huge turn off.
