Creating your college list

As with most aspects of the college admissions process, you should focus on finding the right balance when you create and revise your college list. If you balance your list in terms of selectivity, geography, and fit, you should be able to open up some excellent choices for yourself during your senior year of high school.

Starting the list: Consider contrasting types
The most important time to balance your list is when you first start to look at different kinds of colleges. Exploring only one kind of college or university will expose you to a very limited set of options. There are several thousand colleges and universities in the U.S. that can be divided into distinct types or models. There are large public universities, small private colleges, middle-sized private and public universities, two-year junior and community colleges, urban universities, and small-town colleges. You can find liberal and conservative environments, traditional and alternative academic programs, and religious and nonsectarian institutions.

As you set out to create your college list, begin by considering instinctively what type of institution seems to fit you best. You may be inclined to stay very close to a city or far from one. Perhaps you learn best in small classroom environments or you don't mind listening to a lecture in a large auditorium. You like to know most people in your school or hope to meet new friends all the time. Your initial instincts can guide you as you explore a few schools and test your assumptions. The important point is that you should not limit yourself to these initial guesses. If you are sure you want a large urban university, then check one out, but make sure to visit at least one smaller college in a more suburban or rural setting. You may surprise yourself and decide that type of school fits you better or confirm your inclinations and be more confident about your first choice.

Visit campuses to explore different models
That's right. You need to visit colleges prior to applying to colleges. You don't need to see every one of the schools to which you apply, but you should see enough campuses to know that you are generally on the right track with your list and not making false assumptions or missing interesting possibilities. During initial campus visits, you should attend a scheduled tour and information session (see our recent article on getting the most out of campus visits). Take the time to consider the particular college's fit for you, as well as what the school represents as a general college type.

Diversify your list geographically
It's fine to start close to home as you begin to establish your college list. Most students attend college within a few hundred miles from home, which allows you to come home for the occasional weekend and stay in touch with your high school friends. With increasing competition for admission, and depending on the available college choices near your home, you should consider adding colleges that are farther away. By researching colleges close to home and visiting some to establish which kind fits you best, you can add colleges farther away that match those you like. Many college guides report colleges that crossover with each other, noting that students who apply are often very pleased with these schools. This can help you further your research and be more creative with your list. You can potentially open up exciting choices for yourself that are farther from home. Since most students do stay closer to home, you may get a geographical admission boost because you're applying from far away. Note that applying to public universities from out of state is harder since these institutions favor in-state students. Most students attend public colleges and universities—nearly two-thirds of those enrolled in four-year institutions. Private colleges actively recruit a diverse first-year class and often offer admission and merit-based financial incentives to qualified students who are applying from around the country.

Balance your list by difficulty of admission
Selectivity is another important consideration when constructing your list. At first, don't worry too much about questions like, “which college is my safety school?” You can establish the schools that are at the upper end of your reach group by comparing your high school curriculum, grades, standardized test scores, class rank, and other talents to the reported data from colleges that interest you. If you are just entering junior year, which is a good time to start considering appropriate college models, then you won't have much of this data. However you do have a sense of your place in your high school class, the level of difficulty of your curriculum, and your goals for SATs or ACTs. This is a start toward establishing the level of college you may gain admission to, and which might be the right fit academically. Down the line, as you establish your junior and senior year grades, test scores, and class rank or decile (if made available by your high school), you should be able to gain a better sense of reaches, targets, and safeties or possibles, solids, and likelies.

Again, balance is key. Don't overload your list with schools that are real stretches for you and then keep only one that seems to offer a strong chance for admission. Similarly, don't under apply relative to your talents and goals, seeking only colleges that won't reject you. It's OK to say "No" to colleges, and to apply to schools that will say "No" to you. Remember, applying to colleges does require you to put yourself on the line, but you shouldn't take an admissions committee's decision too personally or as a judgment about your worth as an individual. There are many reasons why colleges accept and reject applicants, many of which have very little to do with your personal attributes or overall ability to do the work. Often, you may be very well qualified for a college, but due to the large number of similarly qualified applicants you may not be among those admitted to the next year's freshman class.

Avoid the usual suspects, easy labels, and this year's hot school
Students at each high school tend to establish a classic clustering pattern around the same group of schools. A dozen or more students pick the same places because they know someone who went there, have friends planning to apply, or have just heard of the college before. Though you might start building your list this way, you should not limit yourself to the usual schools your high school's graduates attend. We call this the “bunching phenomenon,” when too many students from the same area bunch up at the same college admissions offices. These schools won't have specific quotas for how many students to admit from each school, but you can be sure they will reasonably limit the letters of admission they offer in each area. That means you'll have a harder time standing out from the crowd.

Stereotyping schools by what you have heard about them in the rumor mill is another crutch to avoid. It's easy to make black-and-white conclusions about colleges before you have even given them a fair chance, but in doing so, you might be missing excellent opportunities for yourself. Every college is more complicated than its public image and may serve the needs of many different kinds of students. Finally, avoid confusing trendiness in admissions with clear judgment about institutional quality. Colleges change pretty slowly over time. Even though rankings and hot fashionable trends seem to fluctuate every year, colleges themselves remain fairly constant from year to year. If a college is “in” this year, then it might be becoming overly selective, which means you'll have a harder time getting into a school that's not necessarily a stronger institution than a college that's “out” but very right for you.

Be yourself, take the driver's seat, have an open mind, and don't give up!
Finding a college is more like car shopping than searching for your future marriage partner. You will be spending four important years of your life pursuing an education at a college. You will make friends, contacts, and mistakes. You will discover new interests and build on your strengths. A major goal is to discover your calling, establish your credentials, and prepare for a rewarding career. There is more than one perfect college out there to help you accomplish these things, and you should build your list by trying to identify a mix of schools that each could potentially work well for you personally. Take control of the process by expressing your views to your parents, counselors, friends, teachers, and admissions officers. Be open to new ideas and possibilities. Above all, remain persistent through your senior year. Balance your list, and establish the goal of opening up several exciting choices for yourself in the spring of senior year. Then plan on carefully visiting schools and researching your options a little more before making your final decision.