With over 4000+ Colleges and Universities in the US, how do you select the school that is right for you? There are many review sites, rankings and other assessments of schools out there for you to read. Some are better than others, so just be sure to look in many different places for a consensus view. For a thorough view of a school and how it might fit your interests and personality, take a look at a few key factors. As you assess the school qualities you can decide what are the components that are most important to you. Here are a few qualities to consider–size of the school, urban or rural setting, majors offered, acceptance rate, teacher to student ratio, graduation rate, retention rate, Learning Center and academic support, diversity of student population, need based financial aid, athletic opportunities, student life, and supplemental offerings like study abroad.
There are pretty good search engines out there now- Be sure to spend time on a few of these as non of them are comprehensive.
College Navigator (be sure to expand “search options’ button and there many more options for searching https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/
College Board Big Future search engine. https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-search
Virtual Tours/Campus Visits: While stepping on a campus and give you a wonderful sense of the school, it is not always possible. With our exploding technology, students can now go on Virtual Tours of many campuses around the US. Some of these VR tours are better than others, but this is a great resource if you can not make it to all or any campuses on the mainland. Additionally, there are many “fly-in” programs that enable students to visit the campus without cost.
Fly in programs. https://blog.collegevine.com/college-fly-in-and-diversity-programs-a-complete-list/