Finding colleges/ programs

[Hilltopmom]

This feels like the dumbest question.

 

HOW do you help your child find colleges/ programs to apply too?

 

I know there's that big thick book they sell about colleges & their stats (not sure if it's worth buying or not?)

Then I know about the College confidential search engine (which I have not had much luck with).

 

How else?

I've just been googling places we already know about or that other people have mentioned having sucj and such program. There must be a better way to find places we don't know about!

 

Thanks:)

[bettyandbob]

We start local just looking at nearby schools or schools on the way to visit family. We started that in ninth grade. Then I had dd start thinking about careers and course of study. We did that through looking at surveys, volunteering, work, and just observing likes and interests. After that we started searching for colleges based on

Possible majors

Ds's stats

Cost

[Hilltopmom]

He's interested in computer science & engineering, so he knows possible majors, it just seems like there are SO many choices, kwim.

 

He has toured a couple of places during summer engineering programs. Our local U doesn't have his program choices (well, they have CS but a good friend professor in that program highly recommends against his own department, boo).

 

I think once he's taken PSATs & SAT2s we'll have more stats the go on (he's in 10th, didn't take PSATs this year, due to a variety of reasons).

 

Cost, yeah, wow. Totally overwhelmed there.

 

This whole thing is stressing me out!

Great past threads here are stressing me out even more, lol. But I'm glad the info is here:)

Edited November 23, 2015 by Hilltopmom

[JanetC]

We looked at colleges near home, and then we also bought a copy of Rugg's Recommendations on the Colleges. This e-book (you buy a PDF from a website) sorts colleges by majors and selectivity. For each major, there are a list of highly selective, selective, and non-selective colleges to consider.

 

It helped narrow the list of out-of-area colleges down considerably.

 

From within the Rugg's books, we also used data from diycollegerankings.com to try to find some schools that might be good for merit aid.

 

Now, for DD#2, who has a very quirky major in mind that isn't listed in Rugg's, we'll have to find another strategy.

Edited November 23, 2015 by JanetC

[Dmmetler]

DD is setting up her list based on the research they do in her field.

[JanetC]

DD is setting up her list based on the research they do in her field.

 

I would love to hear more about how your DD is going about this. A lot of major research universities are not focused on undergrads, and stats on undergraduate engagement are not published by all schools.

[Dmmetler]

She's in the pre-baccalaureate mentoring program for herpetology run by SSAR, so she attends all of their conferences (which also overlaps ASIH and Herpetologists League). That lets her see which schools are doing a lot of research in the undergraduate division, vs graduate only, and which schools are doing a lot of research in Ethology, which is her particular area of interest, and in ecology, which is her second area of interest. State research journals are another source-undergraduate research rarely makes it into PLOS One, Herpetological Review, or Copeia, but it does make it into the various online proceedings of state Herpetological societies, many of which are open access or are a very small fee per year to join the society as a student member. The same is true with attending regional and state meetings, and where we are, we can often go to three or four a year within a few hour drive.

 

I fully admit that I wouldn't have thought of this-it's an effect of what her mentors are suggesting, as well as spending a lot of time talking to graduate students-but for the most part, she's getting encouraged to look at undergrad programs and their research the same way you'd look at graduate programs.

 

What we're seeing, by the way, is that LACs and 2nd tier state schools are likely to be a better fit than many of the larger universities, which often have amazing research coming out-if you're a doctoral student or post-doc, and there are a lot of grad students who did their BS at those schools.

Edited November 23, 2015 by dmmetler

[Little Women]

Try googling "top engineering colleges" or "top computer science colleges."   Several organizations put out detailed lists for various careers or other parameters.    For my dd, she wanted a Chrstian college that offered dance.  You can guess that there weren't a large number of choices. :)

 

[creekland]

I like asking people in the desired field what schools they recommend.  That has never steered us wrong.

 

Middle son (my pre-med guy) had oodles and oodles of options even after that, so he looked rather specifically at what profs in his desired field specialized in.  He chose a research school that encourages undergrads to participate in research and has never regretted his choice.

 

Actually, none of mine have regretted their choice - three totally different schools, but each the right choice for the guy who chose them - and all found via word of mouth (ok, email as I don't have that many IRL contacts for majors they wanted).

[Nan in Mass]

IPEDS is the government search engine.  It is here: https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/

We found this to be a good source of information on things like percentage of students who return after their freshman year and percentage of students who graduate within 6 years.  Some of those statistics are scarily low.  Since I don't have the most robust students, we paid attention to this.  It also is a good source for information on price and financial aid.

 

We were able to eliminate many programs by doing a few tours of local colleges.

 

If you are on friendly terms with your school system, you might be able to ask the guidance counselors there for suggestions.  Ours said oh - if he is interested in x, he should also apply to y and z.  We asked engineers which schools they liked to hire out of.  We looked for schools that matched the child.  For example, youngest needed a more hands-on engineering school, one with lots of projects.  That eliminated the schools where engineering classes mostly just consisted of solving math problem after math problem.  He had geographical preferences, too.  I spent a lot of time sifting through the engineering programs in the right geographical location that the search engines turned up, looking for ones whose website claimed they were more hands-on.  While I was doing that, my son picked his college.  He had a bunch of older friends who were in an engineering school and told him he should go there because they were all really happy there.  We went and looked, and it became obvious that his friends were right.  LOL  All my searching was useful in the end because I came up with alternatives and safties, and we figured out how to approach the financial aid side of things.  For the older two, there was a short list of schools with their major.  A professional website listed them all.  Geography nixed most of them and I could nix the rest by looking at what the schools chose to emphasize on their websites.  It was pretty obvious that the others were going to be a mismatch.  When they told people which school they were looking at, people confirmed what I had guessed from the websites.

 

It isn't at all a stupid question.  People ask it here all the time. : ) 

 

Nan

[Jenny in Florida]

My son had good luck using the search features on the College Board website and CollegeData.com. Both allow you to enter a variety of information, including your GPA and test scores, desired major(s), the size and type of school you are looking for, what activities you want to participate in, etc., as well as the geographic area in which you are looking. Neither is perfect, but between the two, my son was able to make a good starting list of schools to contact for more information. 

[TheApprentice]

We did a few things:

 

1) Googled top 25-50 schools in sons desired major, which happens to computer science and mechanical engineering

 

2) On the College board website, there is a link called "big future". There is a questionnaire you can have the student take based on the criteria which you think is important, ie. size of school, location of school, location from home, majors, etc. Once finished, it will give you a list of schools that "fit your criteria.

 

3) We researched all schools in our state that offered his desired major, but also "fit" in terms of gpa and SAT scores. Schools that accepted students with scores 200 points lower than his, he was not interested in applying because he didn't think it would be challenging enough.

 

4) Offered 1-2 reaches to apply to

 

After all that, we had about 18 schools on are list. It got narrowed by visits, deeper research of their website, looking at "student reviews" website, jumping through the schools hoops. For example, 1 school demanded SAT Subject tests. well by this time, he was tired/burnt out of testing, so he opted not to jump through that hoop, and so that school came off the list. So he ended up applying to 5 schools, any one of which he'd be fine attending. He did not "fall in love" with any school. I actually suggested he not do that because which ever school he attended, we needed to be financially able to afford.

[MarkT]

He's interested in computer science & engineering, so he knows possible majors, it just seems like there are SO many choices, kwim.

 

He has toured a couple of places during summer engineering programs. Our local U doesn't have his program choices (well, they have CS but a good friend professor in that program highly recommends against his own department, boo).

 

I think once he's taken PSATs & SAT2s we'll have more stats the go on (he's in 10th, didn't take PSATs this year, due to a variety of reasons).

 

Cost, yeah, wow. Totally overwhelmed there.

 

This whole thing is stressing me out!

Great past threads here are stressing me out even more, lol. But I'm glad the info is here:)

Look for an ABET accredited program:

 

http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx

 

then use

 

http://www.collegedata.com/cs/search/college/college_search_tmpl.jhtml

 

to find colleges that fit his SAT, grades, cost  etc

 

My son is in 10th as well - save this advice for his Junior year!

No stress yet.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

My oldest is applying for Computer Science degrees.  It was a challenge to come up with schools.  Computer Science seems to be a bit like English; every school has a degree program.  It can be tough to determine what the strength of the program is.

 

He ended up going through a list of top 100 Computer Science departments and crossing it with the Navy ROTC list (thanks to a wonderful poster here who mashed those lists for us).

 

ETA:  One thing that we've done is look at what the course plans or degree requirements are for various CS degrees.  I think you can tell a little about a program if you look at what the entry math and science courses are.  He's also looked at what sort of special tracks or minors are available.  Another factor that led him toward certain schools is hearing about innovations from teams associated with those schools.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Sebastian (a lady)