College Search, Part 1

Hi everyone!
Last week I spent time at my old high school, working as an extra hand for the band director and giving flute lessons and sectionals through out the week. A few teachers asked me to come talk to their senior classes, about the college search, financial aid, and dorm life. After giving those few speeches I realised I'd like to write the information down in this blog, to help students who stumble on the blog as well as parents and teachers.

This will be written in several sections, chronologically. So, with further adieu...

The College Search


The first thing every student should do prior to applying for schools is search for them. Some people already know where they want to go; maybe a parent or friend went to a certain school; other people have no idea. Whatever your situation, you should still spend a good chunk of time checking out colleges. The quickest way to get an idea of where you want to go is to attend a college fair. This is usually held in the fall, and often includes break out sessions where parents and students can speak with admissions officers, financial aid officers, etc., privately. I personally attended two college fairs, one general college fair held at a local college each year, and one music college fair at Oberlin. Both were SUPER useful. The general college fair helped me eliminate some big state schools, and also find out which ones had the programs I was looking for. The music college fair helped me narrow down those schools and get useful program information, such as how many students are admitted into my major, do they have a cut (or retention) program, etc. etc.. College fairs are a great first place to look.

Let's assume you've attended a few college fairs, collected a lot of free stuff, and now have a list of WAY too many schools you might be interested in. What's next? Make a spreadsheet of the schools, listing out important information such as: location, number of students enrolled, tuition costs, room/board costs, if they have your expected major, percentage of students who recieve financial aid, as well as some questions they may be important to you: do they have a large Hispanic population, do they have churches on campus, etc.. Think about what you want in a college, and put those questions and answers down on paper. It's hard to keep track of that much information without some type of organization. I think my spreadsheet at this stage listed almost 30 schools. It's okay to have a large number, since you're going to be narrowing it down from here.

A List of Questions to Ask About Colleges
Here is just a brief list of the questions I asked when at this point in my college search.

1) Name
2) Location (and how many miles away from home)
3) Tuition
4) Room/Board Costs
5) Do they offer flute performance?
6) Do they offer a jazz major or minor?
7) Who is the flute instructor?
8) Would I study with him/her right away, or would I start with a graduate student?
9) Do they have a cut program?
10) How many students at the university? In the freshman class? In the School of Music? In my music classes?
11) Is there specialized living on campus (fine arts dorms, honors dorms, etc. etc.)?
12) Are there any learning communities I would be interested in?
13) How large is the campus?
14) Do I need/Am I allowed a car on campus, and if so, how much is parking?
15) Can I see myself at this school?

Narrowing Down the List


So now that you've made this wonderful list, it's time to narrow it down. For me, the first to go were schools without my major. Second, schools without a jazz program (since I knew I wanted to either double major or minor in jazz). That probably cut my list down to 20 or so. I then cut schools I couldn't see myself at, and schools that were less then 100 miles away from home, since I wanted to go "away" for college. Now my list was dwindling down to 15 or so. When my list was down to 15, I made three new lists to put the colleges on: "Reach Schools", "Challenge Schools", and "In Schools". The lists are just what they sounds like---Reach Schools are schools that I would love to go to, but had fierce competition and would probably not get into, Challenge Schools are schools I would have to work at to get into, but had a good chance, and In Schools were my backup schools, schools that I was positive I would get into. I divided my schools into these three lists, and realised that I had a lot of reach schools, a few challenge schools, and NO in schools. I decided to pick a few schools to put onto my "In Schools" list. I chose local colleges that, worst case, I could attend for a year and then transfer. Once these lists were made, I started cutting schools. On my reach schools list, I had schools like Manhattan School of Music, Mannes College, Eastman University, Curtis Institute, Julliard, SUNY Potsdam, etc. etc.. BIG music schools. I started chisling down the list based on how many students they took, and cost of tuition and living.

I kept two schools from each category on my list.Starting with reach schools, I took out the schools I felt were WAY out of my reach. These included Curtis, Eastman, and Manhattan. Next I took out the schools I REALLY couldn't afford such as SUNY Potsdam. Then I had my list of two reach schools. Mannes and Julliard. I did the same thing for challenge schools, and ended up keeping Ohio University and CCM. Lastly, I took care of my in schools, opting to only keep the University of Toledo on the list. Finally, after a few months of research, I had my top 5 schools list.