If you just finished up your Sophomore or Junior year of high school, there’s one item that should definitely be on your to-do list: figuring out which colleges you’re going to apply to.
The college application process involves juggling a LOT of balls at once. You’ve got to request letters of recommendation; study for and take the SAT and ACT, often multiple times; draft supplemental essays for the Common App; and fill out the additional application questions themselves. It’s a long haul. And in my over a dozen years of college coaching, I’ve found that the best way for high schoolers to avoid burnout over that long haul is to start off with a thrilling vision of the colleges they might be attending in a few years.
If you’ve just wrapped up 11th grade, you should currently be putting the finishing touches on the list of your target colleges so you can start getting all those moving parts of your college applications in order!
But even if you’re only a rising Junior (i.e. just finished 10th grade) right now, you should still have your college list on your mind. If you don’t even know the type of schools you may wish to apply to, you won’t be able to craft your standardized testing Game Plan, determine WHICH tests (if any) you’ll need to take, and create a target score to work towards.
So, as you can see, mastering the whole college process begins with…giving some thought to which colleges you want to endure this process FOR. Though this IS a chicken-and-egg process whose various components mutually affect one other, you have to start SOMEWHERE. So let’s dive into how to craft YOUR list of colleges, now updated to reflect the current state of the United States!
Making Your List of Colleges
I’m going to ask you to ponder a few types of questions, beginning with the most crucial questions and working down to the less essential (but still relevant) ones. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to answers these Qs for yourself. Luckily the Internet makes this quest surprisingly straightforward if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and get your hands a little dirty! (Well, not REALLY dirty… unless you spilled your dirty chai latte on your keyboard!)
1. Identify Any Strict Parameters and Deal Breakers.
The most obvious types of parameters have to do with location and cost. For instance:
Do you have a strict budget for how much you can pay for tuition? If so, what IS that budget?
Do you require financial aid or merit aid and need to prioritize colleges that offer it generously?
Do you need to attend a college close to your family?
Do you need warm weather? Or do you wilt in the heat and thus need cooler climes?
Do you NEED proximity to a big city and the culture and diversity that entails?
Do you NEED to be in a more suburban, remote location?
Furthermore, in light of the recent Supreme Court rulings and the many rights that are being taken from certain groups of people in certain states, you might ALSO need to ask yourself some additional questions:
If you were assigned female at birth, is it important to you to be able to make informed healthcare decisions about your own body? If it is, you might need to limit your college search to states that don’t force women’s bodies into childbirth and that provide access to contraception.
If you were assigned male at birth and might become sexually intimate with people who can become pregnant—and you do NOT desire to become a parent during your college tenure—then, you, too, might consider applying only to institutions in states that allow more reproductive healthcare options for people with uteruses.
If you identify as LGBTQ+, is it important to you that you’re legally protected from discrimination? If it is, you might limit your college search to states that ensure equality for all peoples, sexual orientation and gender expression aside.
It’s really handy to figure out from Day 1 what your hard Must-haves and Nos are, because that way you don’t have to research every single school on the planet. Instead, you can filter out the “Nahs” quickly and then only do a deeper dive into the ones that are left over! (And you should DEFINITELY only visit the colleges that make it past this first stage!)
Some excellent resources for this initial search stage are: CollegeData.com, The Fiske Guide to Colleges, and Princeton Review’s The Best 386 Colleges.
2. What Do You Want to Study?
I hear you: if you’re going through this process, you’re still a teen. That said, I find that many of my private tutoring clients already do have some sense of their academic and/or creative passions—so you might have that inkling, too.
Of course, that’s not to say this can’t CHANGE over time. My tutoring clients often start out as avid theater kids or soccer players, only to later pursue careers in engineering or law, or to become famous musicians. However, if you DO have a certain career dream (even if it’s just a vague leaning), it makes finding your great college fit that much simpler.
For example, if you know you want to study something highly specific, like forestry or opera singing, then a college or university with only a general “biology” or “fine arts” major might not make the most sense for you.
If, on the other hand, you have NO IDEA what you want to study—not even a “something under the umbrella of the humanities” or “maybe a STEM field” direction…then THAT can inform which type of colleges you put on your list, too! If this is you, you should apply to more flexible schools, like liberal arts programs where you don’t have to declare your major right away, or colleges of “Arts and Sciences” within a larger university…instead of the more narrowly focused colleges (the “College of Veterinary Sciences,” etc.) that comprise many larger universities.
To research this question further (after you peruse the more general college guides linked above), I’d visit colleges’ individual websites and click on “Majors” or “Academics” or “Departments” to see if they can meet your subject-matter-specific goals.
3. Do you Need a Particular Learning Environment to Thrive?
After you figure out the “what (you want to study)”, make sure the “how” works for you as well. Ask yourself:
Do you need small, interactive classes to really “get” it?
Do you need an institution with more substantial academic advising and hand-holding to guide you through your four years?
Or are you down with big lecture halls where you have less interaction and have to be more self-motivated and self-directed to learn the material?
Are you a great self-advocate who can seek out the opportunities and guidance you need?
Do you have learning differences and need to attend somewhere with that offers support in that arena?
Once you’ve sketched out your learning style with these questions, you’ll know that if a college doesn’t fit that style at all….you can cross it off your list!
Then, it’s time for deeper, more involved research, like visiting the campus, attending a virtual tour or information session, or even emailing that college’s regional admissions officers with your questions!
4. What Activities and Opportunities Do You Want to Participate in?
After you’ve concluded that a school is located somewhere that you like, falls within your budget, offers the academic departments (or flexibility) you need and the right learning environment for you…it’s time for the fun stuff!
You want to make sure that you’ll have access to the activities that make your heart sing so that you can spend your next four years exploring and expanding upon your curiosities—and getting a clearer picture of your true passions, interests and purpose.
But in order to do that, we need to start with what you’re interested in NOW. So ask yourself:
Is there a certain extracurricular activity you’ll want to keep up with in college?
Is your particular sport offered at the college? Is the team on your level/would you actually get to play?
Are there performance opportunities (if you’re a performer)?
If you want to study abroad, does this college offer opportunities to do so without that time away from campus interfering with graduating on schedule?
Do undergraduates get to do research (for those future scientists out there)?
Does this college have communities you want to be part of or ARE already a part of?
If the answer is “no,” is it feasible to start your OWN club or group at that institution?
To research this, I would go to each college’s website and click on “Student Life” or “Extracurriculars” or “Clubs,” etc. Take note of what’s available, what’s NOT, and even go poking around the club’s social media pages to see what they’re up to. If you haven’t visited the campus already, or won’t be able to, you can also get a sense of a given college’s vibe from CampusReel.org, a really cool resource that offers college video tours and reviews created by students.
5. Writing Your College List
You probably have SEVERAL schools on the table right now that didn’t get cut after going through the previous four questions. There might (hopefully) be several you’re really psyched about!
So now that we’ve done some research and begun to create a vision, we need to get a bit technical and realistic, too.
For each school, go to CollegeData.com or https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/ and look up the range of GPA and test scores for the most recent class of incoming freshmen. The ranges these websites provide usually represent the middle 50% of the class (or from 25th percentile to 75th percentile), meaning that HALF the students scored within that range, while a fourth scored BELOW and a fourth scored ABOVE.
Mark each college on your preliminary list as one of the following:
Do you fall WITHIN their range of grades and standardized test scores (if they require test scores)? Then that school is a “Target School.”
Are your grades and test scores BELOW incoming freshmen’s range of GPA and test scores? Then that school is a “Reach School” for you.
Are your grades and test scores (if required) ABOVE their middle 50% range of GPA and test scores? Then, for YOU, that would be a “Favorable School.”
Once you have this info collected, here’s what you do with it:
If you just completed your Junior year
You are done, or almost done, with testing (i.e. have only a couple attempts left). At this point in time, you might be able to improve your SAT or ACT scores a fair amount (and if you’d like help in doing so quickly, consider shooting me a message or checking out my cram plan ebooks and courses!). BUT, your cumulative GPA isn’t really going to move much before your college apps are due. So however you labeled the schools on your list is likely the final state of affairs.
When you make your ultimate college list, you want to make sure to have a significant number of “Target” and “Favorable” schools in it! They can’t all be “Reach” schools! So, if you ultimately want to apply to a dozen (12) colleges, maybe half of them (6) are “Targets,” a fourth (3) are “Favorables” and a fourth (3) are “Reaches.”
If you’re starting your junior year this fall
Don’t get discouraged by the test score requirements! You likely haven’t taken the SAT or ACT yet, or at least have several more test attempts ahead. And guess what? Now that we know what scores to aim for, we can create a Target Score and work to get there!
It’s not unusual for my private students to increase 5-7 ACT composite points or 200-400 SAT points, given my streamlined process that gets superior results in the most efficient timeline possible.
So DON’T let the test score ranges stop you from reaching your goals, but DO make sure your GPA is in line with the schools you’re aiming for. And keep coming back to this list; you will change it as you find out more information and get clearer on what you want your college experience to be like.
So, there you have it: my 5-Step method for figuring out which colleges to apply to.
If you still need help whittling down your list and discovering hidden college gems that are a perfect fit for your particular needs, I have a referral for you who does JUST that: Abby Siegel, college entrance consultant.
And if you need help organizing and crafting your college application essays or dramatically increasing your SAT or ACT scores, see how you can work with me here, or check out my self-study ebooks and online courses here.
