Identifying potential 'good fit' colleges
What are you looking for: think about what you want from a college
When you begin your college search, the whole enterprise seems impossibly overwhelming. There are so many schools, so many factors to consider, and no evident way to begin to boil it all down. We have a couple of suggestions to get you past the hump.
First, begin with YOU, and consider a couple of key questions:
- Are you looking for liberal arts or for a specific kind of training? Are there particular areas of study that you want to be sure are strong?
- Are you more comfortable in a traditional environment, or a more non-conformist one?
- Do you like the idea of a large school (10,000+), a smaller school (5,000 and below), or one in-between?
- Do you see yourself in a rural or more urban environment?
- How far from home do you want to be?
- Other factors: campus culture? athletics? single-sex education? finances?
You don't have to know the answers to all of these questions—you simply need to consider them, and little by little the answers will take shape, as you read about schools, talk to friends, family and counselors, and begin to settle into your search process. Of foremost importance: be honest with yourself, and trust your gut feelings. YOU will be the one attending this school, not your friends, your parents or your older brother.
Second, choose only one or two guide resources to begin with, so you don’t get overwhelmed (for more on resources see Researching the Colleges). If you prefer to work on the web, play around with one or two of the college search engines. If you prefer to work with printed material, get a copy of one of the well-known and dependable guides—just make sure you get one that has descriptive prose about the colleges in addition to basic statistics. You will find that once you get comfortable with one type of resource, it will be much easier to dip into others and get the information you need.
Third, use your college counseling resources. In addition to meeting with your high school counselor, call or meet with an ACAP counselor. Helping you build and fine-tune your list is one of the basic services we offer, and we are more than happy to review what you’ve done, help with where you’re stuck, and suggest some schools you may not have considered.
What are they looking for: the ‘ballpark,’ or how to assess where your credentials stand in relation to a school’s selectivity
Okay, so the college search process isn't just about what you want, but also about which colleges are likely to admit you. How do you get a handle on this piece of the puzzle, especially in this era of high-volume and high-powered competition?
The key is to assess as accurately as possible what your particular ‘ballpark’ is in terms of basic academic credentials—performance in high school and standardized test scores—and then match that to an appropriate roster of schools. The guides and search engines will help you with this, as should your college counselor at school. A good college list should be grounded in your ballpark: schools that you like or love and that are squarely in your range credential-wise. You then elaborate on either end with some tougher picks and some safer picks. Different counselors use different terms for these categories, but they generally fall into three levels (and here we’ll use our preferred terminology): reaches, targets and back-ups. Every list will have a different mix of these, but the important thing is that your list has a carefully selected range of schools that a) appeal to you, and b) has your ballpark as its starting point.
Beyond the science of the ballpark, the admission process at many colleges is influenced by less objective criteria such as context, personality and, quite frankly, the admission reader's gut sense of your fit with their school. There are also factors such as athletics, special talents, or an extraordinary personal or academic achievement that a school may find compelling.
We are happy to work with you in considering the particulars of your candidacy, and what schools might or might not fit with your list.
