I’m a California community college transfer student, getting ready to transfer for fall 2018, and I honestly just have no idea what I’m doing. I somehow managed to submit my UC applications, forgot about the CSU app (lol), and now I’m trying to tackle the beast of private colleges.
I feel obligated to apply to private colleges because I want to have options…but I’ve never done any research on colleges outside of California and frankly have never even heard of most of them (even supposedly “big name” schools).
I simply do not understand how it is possible to narrow down HUNDREDS of schools. Every time I try to research schools I feel like I’m just throwing darts and looking at whatever it lands on. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking FOR. So far the only narrowing criteria I have is that I’ll only consider schools with a solid Russian program (since I’m a Russian major).
I don’t want to spend a bunch of time and money just randomly applying to whatever schools seem cool. But I also don’t want to risk going to a UC, finding out that it’s not the right fit, and spending my life wondering what might have been different if I had just applied somewhere else.
What do you recommend? How do I even BEGIN the process of looking through so many schools?
Think of it as a Venn diagram. 1) Circle one is finances. Don’t just look at the sticker price. Look on College Navigator for the net price for your income bracket. That wil give you a general way to screen. Once you narrow down some schools, run their net price calculators. 2) Circle 2 is do they have what you want to study? German language, computer science, marzipan sculpting, paper engineering–whatever you’re interested in. That will further narrow your range of schools. If you don’t know, then think of two or three possibilities and make sure you attend a school where you can try those out. 3) Can you get in? to figure that out, take your scores and look at prepscholar (or some other place, but prepscholar does a lot of work for you). google name of school then prepscholar. You can see scores/ gpa and then at the bottom there’s a place where you can figure out your chances with your scores. Another technique is to google name of school and graph, then hit images. you can find graphs of accepted vs rejected dots by scores and gpa. 4) Possible fourth circle is anything you want it to be–Greek or no, geographic area, rank, large or small, urban rural etc.
You’re looking for the few schools in the middle of the circle overlaps.
@merc81 Well, I would call myself an average good student. Basically, schools aren’t tripping over themselves to get to me, but I have no reason to assume I’d be rejected from most decent schools. High GPA, just a few solid ECs, a couple cool jobs, that kind of stuff.
Oh, BUT, (huge but), I totally forgot to mention that I never took the SAT/ACT. So that’s the main thing that would disqualify me from a lot of schools.
There is a growing list of test optional schools which includes some outstanding universities. Google that topic and take the list and apply it to the Venn diagram approach (really good idea!) and see what you find.This will take some time and dedication on your part but well worth it if you want additional options.