Which of the Following Criteria Is Most Descriptive of a Private Liberal Arts College Points 3

What to consider when choosing a college or university

Factors to Consider When Choosing a College or Academy

by Becton Loveless

You take probably heard it over and over once more: choosing a college is 1 of the about important decisions you volition make in your life. And it's truthful. Where you lot attend college will accept a lasting impact on your personal and professional life.

Merely the truth is, many students select a college based on emotion or a very limited fix of criteria-sometimes just a gut feeling. While this won't preclude you from academic success, such an important determination should probably undergo a college level of scrutiny.

If you're shopping around for colleges, you lot're going to desire to consider a broad range of factors, such as location, size, price, academic quality, campus safety, choice of majors, too as other factors that are important to you personally.

Below are some of import factors to consider when choosing a college. These factors start general and get more specific. As you narrow downwardly your list of schools, yous're going to want to inquire more than detailed questions and dig deeper to find out if that school will be a good fit for you.

Ask Yourself Why You lot are Going to College

This is a simple question, but the answer rarely is. Near high schoolhouse students don't know what they want to do when they abound up. But remember, yous're choosing a higher, not a major. Selecting the best college is simply equally much a process of learning about yourself as information technology is most prospective schools.

You may not know what career you want to pursue afterward graduation, only you certainly know what your interests are and what you're adept at. Thinking about this will help you figure out if you're leaning towards liberal arts or a technical field.

Self-reflection volition also help you get a grasp on other factors. Do you want to attend a large or small schoolhouse? Far away or close to domicile? Expensive or affordable? As yous ask yourself these questions, you will brainstorm to have a better agreement of your ain priorities.

Information technology may even exist possible that y'all're non quite ready for college yet. You lot may want to take a year off, but make sure that you spend it wisely. Other countries have a tradition of students taking a year after high schoolhouse to travel, piece of work or volunteer. This is not a tradition in the United States, so you lot want to make certain you practise something productive with your time. When you finally do apply for colleges, they will want to know what yous did with your complimentary time during the prime of your life.

Accreditation

Before you lot spend any time investigating a college, first brand certain it is accredited. This means that an officially licensed system has vetted the school and reviewed its curriculum to verify that it meets basic academic standards for higher education.

Almost schools volition readily provide this information on their website-normally on the About or Admissions pages. If y'all're having trouble finding it, just phone call or e-mail the admissions department.

A higher or university can be nationally or regionally accredited. Within a college, specific schools, departments or programs can too have their ain accreditation. This ensures that your caste will be recognized past employers and other institutions of higher education.

Blazon of School

The existent question is, what type of education do you lot want? Near students would respond that they don't know yet. But you don't have to choose a major or decide on a career…not simply yet.

Take a step back and ask yourself some basic questions: Where do your interests and abilities prevarication? Are you improve suited for liberal arts subjects or more technical fields, such equally math, scientific discipline and engineering? By the time yous're a junior or senior in high schoolhouse, yous probably have an thought.

Most colleges and universities lean in one direction or some other. A small liberal arts college will non take much to offer a pupil that wants to be an engineer. She volition want to apply to larger research universities that have the resources for engineering, besides every bit other technical and scientific fields.

Recall of the type of school as your broadest level of criteria. It is very general and is geared to narrow down your list. Once you apply it with other factors, described below, your options volition go clearer.

Geographic Location

Most students have an idea as to whether they would like to stay close to dwelling house or not. Exercise y'all want to live in a big city or somewhere a little quieter? Does a party campus sound similar a fun office of the college experience or just a distraction? What about weather and regional culture?

Perhaps most importantly, can you lot afford to go out-of-country, especially to a more expensive big city? We'll hash out cost in more particular below, but choosing to attend college outside of your home country volition automatically brand everything more expensive.

Geographic location tin can take a big impact on your overall college experience. Even if you like the school, if you detest where information technology's located the side by side iv years could exist tough. If y'all're looking at schools in a particular metropolis, brand sure you lot actually like it at that place. If you haven't visited in a while, you should probably schedule a trip.

Also consider criminal offence and safety, not just for the city merely the campus itself. Almost every major school will provide crime statistics for campus, and many volition include surrounding areas. You might retrieve of college as a prophylactic and fun place, and it is. But law-breaking happens, and criminal offence rates vary widely from school to school.

Size of School

There are thousands of quality schools out there and they come in practically all sizes. A school's size can tell you a lot about information technology. And much like type of school and geographic location, you probably have some sort of idea most the size of school you'd like to nourish.

Large colleges commonly accept more than resources. This can include campus facilities such as student housing, libraries, calculator admission, health centers, athletic facilities, culture and amusement. Large research universities also tend to have large budgets to invest in faculty, classroom engineering and research and development labs for science, engineering and other fields of study.

Maybe near chiefly, large institutions usually provide more than academic options, including hundreds of different majors and concentrations. This can exist particularly attractive if you haven't settled on a major or are looking to pursue an interdisciplinary major.

Small colleges accept enough to offer that larger institutions cannot. Many colleges stay small so they tin specialize in liberal arts education or even a certain discipline within liberal arts. The campus and the class sizes will be smaller, and the overall college feel is ordinarily much more intimate.

Remember, a small and cozy school can still be located in a big, bustling urban center. And a big public academy can exist located in a small boondocks (these are often the party schools). It'southward important to judge the size of the school in the context of the surrounding environment.

Is a Big or Pocket-size College Right for Me?

A Big College Might Be Correct for You lot If…

Y'all practice well with learning independently. You don't ofttimes need help from teachers, and if yous practise need help, yous're able to recognize information technology and seek information technology out.
You want a wide variety of clubs, sports, and activities to cull from on a daily basis.
Y'all're okay with your professors not knowing your name, or you lot're willing to make yourself stand out and become to know your professors.
You want everyone to recognize the name of your schoolhouse when you tell them where you go.
Yous love sports and desire to cheer on your team at big games.
You're undecided for your major or you're pursuing an obscure major that isn't offered at smaller schools.
You lot're more than inclined to go after what you desire and understand that you will have to compete with a lot of other students for opportunities.
Yous desire to have a large alumni network when you graduate.
You get energized and exhilarated by large groups of people.
You don't mind existence taught past teaching administration instead of your professor.
You lot tin can take the responsibility to regularly visit your bookish adviser and brand sure you're on rails for your major.
You feel confident that you'll be able to find your ain community to feel a function of then you don't get lost in the crowd. Yous don't want to see people you recognize everywhere you go.
Yous desire research to be a major part of your teaching. This can be helpful in getting admitted to graduate school.
Y'all don't listen taking a jitney or walking a bit to get to class.

A Pocket-sized Higher Might Be Right for You If…

You depend on support and guidance from teachers. Y'all have problem recognizing when y'all need help, and rely on your teachers to step in when you demand them.
Y'all're okay with having fewer lodge, sport, and action options. (Although at that place volition withal be plenty at near all schools, you volition just find a larger diverseness, also every bit more specialized options at larger schools)
You want your professors and classmates to know who you are, and you want to collaborate with them in a modest class setting.
You don't listen if people exterior your local area accept never heard of your school.
Y'all don't like attending sporting events, or you prefer smaller venues.
You are certain smaller schools offer your major.
You want less competition for opportunities (scholarships, work study positions, etc.). This could even mean there are actually more opportunities available to you lot because there is much less competition than there would exist at a large schoolhouse.
You lot really want to know the alumni of your school so networking is more meaningful.
You quickly get overwhelmed and stressed around big groups of people.
You desire your professors to be the ones actually doing all of the instruction.
You want your adviser to know you lot well and to continue on elevation of requirements for yous, alerting yous if you're missing something or reminding y'all what classes yous need to take.
You want the whole school to feel like a community. You enjoy seeing familiar faces and running into acquaintances everywhere you go.
Research isn't part of your educational plan (many small schools don't have enquiry facilities).
You lot desire all of your classes and other campus facilities to be very close to your dorm or apartment.

Take a expect at these lists and endeavor to determine which i suits yous better. Try putting a star next to each argument that describes yous; y'all may end up being surprised past which section has more than stars.

Also have into consideration any of these statements that are not negotiables for you. Peradventure you have more stars in the pocket-size college category, only your major is simply offered at bigger schools; if y'all're 100% set on your major, then your decision will be made for you.

If You're All the same Unsure

If you've done your research and visited schools but y'all however can't decide what is right for you, a good choice is to choose a large school that has smaller branch campuses. This way, y'all can start out at whichever type of campus you think you lot would prefer, and easily transfer to a larger or smaller campus if you cease upwards being unhappy where you are. Attending a smaller branch campus of a big school tin also requite y'all the best of both worlds. You'll go many of the perks of a big school, such as a large alumni network and name recognition, merely you'll go to do it all from a smaller campus.

Some other choice is to start out at 1 type of school and but have your general education (gen ed) courses that will transfer to other schools. This could as well exist a way to salvage some coin if you exercise a yr or two at a cheaper school for gen ed classes and and then transfer to your dream school for the rest of your education.

Once you go started at a school or in a major, it tin can feel like that's where you're stuck and there's no turning back. If yous start out at i school and find out that you're miserable and you fabricated the wrong decision, yous're non stuck there for four years. Even if it ways it takes you a piddling bit longer to finish school, an extra twelvemonth or two is worth it if it makes you happy and means yous're improve able to figure out the rest of your life.

One last important gene to consider if yous're on the fence is your return on investment. Will y'all exist more than probable to discover a high paying job with a caste from a large, well-known university? Not necessarily. PayScale's College Salary Report lists the colleges with the highest paid graduates, and both minor and big schools make the list. In fact, the top school on the list, Harvey Mudd College, has a total undergraduate enrollment of less than one,000 students.

Overall Cost

Other factors may be more important to you personally, but in the end, cost may trump them all. There are so many educational activity options out there, and they all crave a substantial fiscal investment. But some volition put you into debt for years, while others will take decades to pay for.

Private schools are usually more expensive than public colleges and land universities. However, private schools tend to have larger endowments and offer more grants and scholarships. This can even out the cost of tuition to some degree.

Tuition is only about half of the overall cost of attention college. Housing, food, transportation, books and other cost-of-living expenses contribute to a much higher "sticker price." If yous're looking at schools in expensive cities like New York or Los Angeles, you're likely to exist paying 2 or iii times more in rent.

Remember Geographic Location? Hopefully you have given some thought non only to where you would like to go, but where you can afford to go. Attending college out-of-state is automatically more expensive. The tuition will be subject to not-resident fees, only you volition also probably spend more on cost of living.

If money is more of an obstruction, you may want to consider living at home and studying your full general requirements at a customs college. It has go very mutual, not simply for affordability. Across the board, community colleges have improved bookish standards and made it easier to transfer credits to iv-year universities. Many studies fifty-fifty prove community college students going on to greater academic success than their university counterparts.

Academic Quality

Academic quality is further downwardly on this listing, but not because it is less important. It is more specific. The factors listed above volition assistance you narrow downwards your list. Academic quality may very well be the determining factor in your ultimate decision.

One matter that happens when you search for colleges is you learn more about college itself. Conducting the search will assistance inform your ideas about what you desire to written report and what you want to gain from your college experience. Equally your list gets shorter and shorter, you should exist giving more scrutiny to the academics at each schoolhouse.

If your loftier school offers guidance counseling, you should absolutely have advantage of it. A counselor will sit down with you and assist you analyze what you're looking for. They will also have literature and resource for yous, including reviews of dissimilar colleges and academic programs.

Practise some online research of your own. Don't but read general descriptions of colleges, but expect into specific departments and programs. You should exist able to find enough of information most almost any school out there.

Rankings are fun, just they tin be misleading. Publications like U.Southward. News & World Report have their own criteria for determining rankings. They might accept different opinions than you lot almost what is important in a higher. It doesn't hurt to await at rankings, merely you lot're going to desire to dig deeper.

If you know what field you would like to report, use that to your advantage. Get the school'south chore placement statistics for diverse departments. What percentage of students ire able to find jobs after graduation? If possible, seek out career professionals in that field and their input. You may get recommendations to great colleges you've never heard of.

Kinesthesia

Bookish quality and faculty become hand in paw. A college professor can be much more than just a teacher. In improver to instilling valuable skills that will prepare you lot for adult life, they are training yous for a career and in some cases, acting as a mentor.

If yous have an clue of what yous'd like to report, accept a adept expect at the faculty in related departments. It tin be hard to know how to judge kinesthesia members without actually taking their class. Just commencement reading nigh dissimilar professors at different schools and soon y'all will develop a basis of comparison. If you lot accept campus visits scheduled, effort and meet with kinesthesia members personally.

Patently you want well-qualified teachers, merely yous also want personal attention. Many professors at larger universities are more focused on enquiry and consul teaching to graduate students. Smaller universities and customs colleges tend to take more focus on the classroom and offer students greater access to their professors.

Besides look at the pupil-to-instructor ratio and the average class size. Student/teacher ratios volition give y'all an overall remainder of the college, but can be skewed if professors focus on research. If possible go grade size numbers for specific departments. Besides proceed in mind that freshman classes tend to be bigger, while classes in your major will be more than intimate.

Campus Surround

The environment on campus is some other crucial aspect of your college experience. Practise you desire to be in a big city or a rural setting? Do y'all want to alive in educatee dorms or find your ain flat? Are you concerned nearly rubber and campus security? Campus life varies immensely from higher to college, and for some people it can be just every bit of import as the academics in shaping their feel.

Every bit you investigate colleges, larn what y'all can near the campus civilisation. Some schools have a bustling campus community full of events and student organizations. Others are commuter schools, where very few students, if whatever, live on campus and participate in extracurricular activities.

The best thing you tin do is visit the campus in person; at that place's but no substitute. Information technology will give you the opportunity to walk the grounds, feel the free energy, gustatory modality the food (literally), and near importantly, ask detailed questions. You may fifty-fifty be able to sit down in on some classes.

Some students with the fiscal means fifty-fifty schedule a 2nd campus visit. This is not an choice for everyone-fifty-fifty one visit is expensive-but information technology illustrates how important information technology is to see the school with your own eyes. You're going to be spending four (or more) years of your life in this place. You want to be sure that information technology is somewhere y'all desire to be.

Academic Majors

One of the worst situations yous can get yourself into is enrolling in a college and discovering something you'd dear to written report, simply to find out it is not offered as a major. You volition have to choose a different major or transfer schools, which can exist plush and extend your college career.

You've been searching for colleges based on general interests (see "Type of School" above), but now information technology's time to narrow it down to a few potential majors. Yous don't accept to decide on one, just have a range of options in mind. Later on, you might be looking at two dissimilar schools. One offers all the majors on your list, the other doesn't. Having criteria like this tin brand your eventual decision much easier.

Ideally, if you lot already have a major selected you tin can search for a college based on that. This will requite yous the reward of searching for schools in the context of a larger career/life plan. You can investigate academic departments more thoroughly and advisedly select a schoolhouse that'due south a perfect fit for y'all.

But that'southward in an ideal world. Most students simply declare a major during their sophomore year and don't accept that information when choosing a higher. That'south okay. If y'all've been considering all the factors listed higher up and take a general idea of what you want to study, you shouldn't have too many surprises.

This may be a little different if you lot're applying to a very minor school with a limited academic focus. In that example you probably want to have a specific major in mind when you enroll. If you end up deciding on a completely different bailiwick-a mutual occurrence-and then you lot may find yourself stuck with few alternatives.

In the stop, choosing a major is the function of the process that gets down to the nitty-gritty specifics. You'll want to exercise plenty of research and weigh all the factors described above before devoting too much time to this topic.

Career Opportunities

Equally stated above, you want to accept some sort of plan for your academic career. That includes giving some thought to what yous desire to do after graduation. You don't have to make up one's mind annihilation, just outset thinking well-nigh it. This will help y'all judge whether or not a college will assistance you see your goals in life.

Some colleges invest heavily in career counseling services, others exercise not. If possible, get some statistics on career placement from the schoolhouse. A college that is agile in this field will take this information readily available. Career counseling can exist invaluable in helping you find internships and employment.

Some colleges and universities have an active alumni network. Recollect of this as career counseling on steroids. Especially with Ivy League and other prestigious universities, an alumni network keeps the school plugged into diverse industries and provides graduates with direct access to employers and career opportunities.

Seek Out Assistance

Not to affright you, just this is a major conclusion in your life, possibly the biggest decision you've made so far. You don't want to make it alone. Bring other people into the process, including parents, other family unit members, teachers, friends, college officials and college graduates. The more than input y'all accept, the more informed your conclusion will be.

Chances are your parents are going to have opinions and priorities of their own. It is vital that you maintain clear and honest communication with your parents throughout the process.

Some parents are overbearing and practically brand the decision for their child. Others simply have their own concerns, particularly when information technology comes to finances, but have difficulty existence a constructive part of the process. Selecting the best college is the pupil'due south decision, and it's important that he or she sits in the driver's seat.

Many high school students don't realize they have so many people to turn to for help. Have a footstep back and look at the adults in your life. If they are successful and happy, ask them about their college feel. Near will probably tell you lot that it didn't matter so much where they went to school, but what they did with the opportunity. Even those who didn't go to college volition have some perspective on why and how that affected their life.

Perspective

Choosing a higher is a massive undertaking with lots of different factors to consider. Many students don't requite the process plenty time or thoughtful consideration. This can make the pick process much more stressful and your eventual choice much more than miserable.

But if y'all carefully weigh all of these factors, too every bit some of your own, y'all will eventually navigate your way through the procedure. Take it stride past stride. Start general and, equally you acquire more near yourself and your range of options, get more than and more specific. In the stop, what started out as hundreds of options volition be narrowed down to merely a few, and y'all will discover a great college for y'all.

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