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Ame E.
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Has anyone set up spreadsheets comparing different college, costs, majors, etc.

College Board and College confidential have a ton of information on there.

 

If you've done this, please share your categories: I have TWO kids looking at schools next year (both juniors in high school) and I am a little overwhelmed.

 

Please share what has been helpful to you in making comparisons and deciding where to apply.

 

Ame

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I made a HUGE spreadsheet when we were evaluating colleges for ds. Here's a listing of the more useful categories that I had. The italicized items were specific to ds's interests--he wanted to major in engineering (he ended up in CS), and get a violin performance minor. Also, for us, appropriate campus ministries were a must. You'd have different categories depending on your dc's interests/needs regarding majors, minors, and interests like sports or music, but maybe this will give you some ideas to springboard off of:

College name

Email/contact info

Questions to Ask

Visit notes

Admission Req's

Engineering Pgm Rank

Reputation

Engineering Curriculum

Class model

Faculty credentials

Grad placement

Internships

Class size (US News says 5-10:1 is good, 11-15:1 is common at better schools--will have small upper division, 16-20:1, bad)

Music--Full Symphony

Access to Music Pgms for non-majors

Music minor

Musical Theater

Campus Ministries

Size/Sense of Community

Neighborhood safety

Geographical location

Ease of travel to/from college

College Name Recognition

Extra-curricular Activities

Scholarship Availability

Financial Aid

Cost (tuition, rm & bd, books and est personal exp)

 

HTH! :001_smile:

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I made some sheets up on Word similar to Music Mom's and printed them out and then filled them in by hand, updating periodically on the computer. We also bought a couple of those really big blotter calendars. We used different colored pens for different kinds of dates. I like the lists. My dds like the calendars.

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We found ourselves overwhelmed with info, and we made huge charts too. If you know how to hyperlink, that is handy in an excel spreadsheet. Don't forget to record your student's id and password for each school.

 

We found that at some point the chart-approach broke down in its usefulness. We were trying to get too much in one place. So we also made a notebook with a different tab for each school, and put anything and everything in this. There was some order to it. For instance, we were very interested in the variations in course requirements for the college major my ds was interested in, so the first page behind each tab was a print out from each school showing the semester-by-semester courses required for his intended major.

 

It was helpful to have a physical notebook (of course THE CHART was at the very front of it :)). It was a big relief to me when I figured that out. ;)

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We did a similar comparative chart with the various factual information as the other posters have mentioned, highlighting the ones that "won" in the various categories. However, we found that there were some things that didn't fit in categories and were more subjective and personal preferences, so we also made a sheet for each college that listed its pros and cons that was an easy way to see at a glance what our overall impression of the school was. We kept a file for each college with all the various mailings, info printed off their web sites, etc, in it and kept this paper at the front of each file. Periodically we (my dd and I) would independently "rank" the colleges in order of our current preferences (top 5 or 10), then discuss our rankings which we found to be a helpful exercise - and once the decision was made, it was interesting to look back and see how things had changed over time. It is an overwhelming bunch of information, but it does all seem to work out in the end!

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We found ourselves overwhelmed with info, and we made huge charts too. If you know how to hyperlink, that is handy in an excel spreadsheet. Don't forget to record your student's id and password for each school.

 

We found that at some point the chart-approach broke down in its usefulness. We were trying to get too much in one place.

 

:iagree:Yes, our chart got to be so huge it was really unwieldy and hard to work with (we printed it out a couple of times and taped the pages together... it covered the entire dining room table!)

 

So we also made a notebook with a different tab for each school, and put anything and everything in this. There was some order to it. For instance, we were very interested in the variations in course requirements for the college major my ds was interested in, so the first page behind each tab was a print out from each school showing the semester-by-semester courses required for his intended major.

 

It was helpful to have a physical notebook (of course THE CHART was at the very front of it :)). It was a big relief to me when I figured that out. ;)

I LOVE this notebook idea! We had a lot of information on THE CHART that would have worked so much better organized this way. I'm definitely going to try this when we go through the whole process again next year for dd. Thank you, Brigid!! :001_smile:

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When we went on college tours, everyone had a binder with sheets of info and extra paper to take notes. We started out with pocket folders and worked our way up to binders. We even had separate ones at one point for parent and student.....mostly due to the Financial Aid stuff. When we went on tours we had a little ole spiral notebook with our questions and notes jotted down. We transferred the relevant info when we got home. We are just starting once again, glad this subject came up. We do have "the list" that we must now triage. I found that taking notes when visiting college confidential and the school website was v. helpful. I'm not a big spreadsheet person but, my dh would probably do it that way, he is king of Excel!

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