RESEARCHING COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES Deciding where to apply is a highly individual decision. Your choices will be influenced by where you want to study, what you want to study, and your high school grades earned so far. It will also be influenced by personal factors including everything from location to class size, from available activities to cost of attending, and it's completely normal to change your mind about your priorities several times during this decision-making process! For almost every student, there are dozens of institutions where you would be happy and successful. This guidebook is one resource among many for you to utilize in the university search process. Web Resources In Maia, students can research universities, create a list of prospective universities based on a variety of factors, follow the progress of submitted applications, etc. If you are unsure how to access Maia, see your university advisor. The university advising office has also created an extensive list of useful resources under the “Resource” section of Maia. Spend time browsing the links. Reference Materials In addition to the resources in Maia, one of the best independent guides is the Fiske Guide to Colleges, which is easy to read, interesting, and accurate. Fiske is one of the few resources to utilize feedback from current students and faculty members. Additional useful print resources include Colleges that Change Lives, College Admission: From Application to Acceptance, the Heap Guides (UK), and the Good University Guide (UK). Regarding rankings: each year, the US News & World Report, and several other publications rate universities. Each publication uses a different methodology to create its list, and each methodology is highly subjective. Some draw in large part from third-party websites like CollegeProwler or
ratemyprofessor.com, and some poll professors, administrators, and high school counselors about their opinions regarding other institutions. Please view rankings with a sceptical eye. Directly comparing a school such as UCLA (with 30,000+ students) to Tufts (with 6,000 students) to Princeton (with 4500+ students) to Lynn university (with 2500 students) or to Kalamazoo College (with 1400+ students) is problematic. Yet, that is exactly what these rating guides attempt to do. And few guides (let alone rankings) take student feedback into account. Just because a for-profit publishing company has assigned a rank to a school does not mean that the ranking is in any way reliable. If you do use a ranking list, please use it only as a guide, not as a reliable reference. Visits, Campus Tours, and Information Sessions Perhaps the greatest impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the university admissions process is on visits. This includes students’ ability to visit university campuses, but also includes admissions officers’ ability to visit LAS and share information about their universities. In a typical year, LAS hosts roughly 100 university representatives who come to our school to meet with students and members of the university advising team. In the absence of travel, university admissions offices have expanded their virtual offerings to a robust array of tours and sessions, and we encourage students to take advantage of the opportunities that are available. The more information gathered about different types of schools, the easier it will be to make a thoughtful university list. Participating in tours and sessions—yes, even virtually—also provide a chance for you to demonstrate interest in the college, which can be a factor in some university’s decision-making processes.
