Now that our Class of 2021 students have their last decisions in hand, it’s time for our students who weren’t admitted ED to choose which campuses they’ll be on next year and send their deposits in! While it would be nice if the stress ended with the arrival of the acceptance letters, and we always joke that too many choices is a good problem to have, this is typically the first major life decision that a student will make - and the pressure and anxiety that comes along with such a big decision can turn it into the most difficult part of the process for many. That has never been more true than this year, when many students in the Class of 2021 have never had a formal college visit.

So if you’re struggling with these issues, here are some tips that might help you to think through your final college decision!

P.S. If you are a parent hoping to help your student through this difficult time, check out our post from a couple of years ago - written especially for you!

1. Make it familiar.

Part of the reason that choosing a college can feel so overwhelming is that it is an entirely new experience! We hear this from students and families all the time: “I’ve never even been to sleep-away camp! How can I choose?” And yes, college will absolutely be a big adjustment for many of those students. But it doesn’t have to be totally unfamiliar or unexpected.

Think about your high school right now. What do you love? What about your school will you miss after graduation? And what do you dislike? What are the things that make you say “ugh, can’t wait to get out of here!”? Try to list at least three things in each category.

Then, use your list as a guide for your preferences. Sick of seeing the same faces day in and day out, and ready to meet some new people? You might be interested in a school with a large, diverse student body. Sad to leave your friends and the favorite teachers that made high school so special for you? You might be looking for a close-knit community with small class sizes.

Remember, don’t be afraid to be honest with yourself about what really matters to you, even if others roll their eyes. After all, you’ve already established during the college search process that every one of the schools to which you applied would be a good fit!

So if all else is equal, and you suffered through four years of living with roommates through cold New England boarding school winters (cough cough this was me), toss those snow boots in the trash and cross off any of the schools north of the Mason-Dixon line. And don’t feel even a tiny bit guilty about going for the schools that will allow you to have a single during your freshman year! You’ll be so much happier this way…I know from experience :)

2. Think about the future

Where do you hope your next steps will take you? I’m asking this question literally, from a geographic perspective- you already looked at important percentages during your college search, so you know that it’s likely that every school on your list will result in employment or graduate school placement. But where?

Of course, you can certainly go to school in Virginia and end up with an amazing job in Denver after graduation. But for the most part, students from your school will likely migrate to the nearest large city after graduation, and that is probably going to be somewhere with a big alumni network that can help you. A William & Mary graduate in Washington, D.C. is going to benefit a lot more from the network and name recognition than one who is job searching in Los Angeles!

On a similar note, if campus recruiting is important to you (i.e., for business and engineering majors), take a look at the geographic reach of the companies on the school’s recruiting schedule. Many school career centers will advertise the companies that recruit on their campuses, and this can be a good guide to help you choose the place with the right connections and geographic footprint. So if you’re a prospective business major and living in the windy city isn’t so appealing, you may consider bypassing Michigan after all - campus recruiting in the Midwest is very Chicago-centric.

3. Go beyond pros and cons

Making a pro/con list is a tried and true decision-making technique. But then again, these can get messy! After all, how do you compare “Has a really impressive maker space” with “No cars on campus freshman year”? Instead, think about the top three to five MOST important factors in your college search, and let those guide your decision.

When we are brainstorming with students, we call these the “must-haves” - important qualities that align with your values. These are going to be different from student to student, but may include things like a particular major or area of study, the community on campus, the location, the career opportunities, and the cost of attendance. If you didn’t do this at the beginning of your college search like our students did, or if you suspect that your “must-haves” evolved over time, it’s never too late!

For those who considered these from the start and now have a list full of schools with must-have characteristics, I have an exercise to recommend that actually came from my mom during my own college search. When we were sitting in a hotel room in Nashville and trying to differentiate between my top picks, Vanderbilt, Wash U, and Emory, she suggested that we not only make a pro/con list but actually rank those pros and cons so that we weren’t giving too much weight to factors that weren’t as important.. even if there were more of them.

Vanderbilt had more pros for me than Wash U and Emory, so if we were tallying up pros and cons it would have been the clear winner. But they had no traditional undergraduate business program, and I wanted to major in business…. while I was prepared to work around it, that was still a pretty big deal at the end of the day.

Almost 20 years later, I’m still relying on that train of thought when I help students calculate a weighted average to determine which preferences are more important than others. For example, if you have five very important factors, but one is clearly more significant than the rest, followed by a second, maybe you decide to weight factor #1 as 40% of your decision, factor #2 as 30% of your decision, and the remainder as 10% each.

4. Go with your gut

Don’t underestimate your instincts! Sometimes, you will just have that feeling that a school is the right place for you as you walk around the campus, and that factor is just as important as any listed above.

5. But don’t stress if you don’t know what your gut is telling you

This has been a difficult year for all of us. If you haven’t had the chance to visit many schools or see a campus in full swing, you may very well not have been able to experience any kind of “gut feeling.” No big deal, really.

Honestly, even in a normal year, I often have students express concern about this - it’s easy to feel like you’re doing something wrong when other kids at the lunch table talk about how they “felt right at home” after stepping on a given campus, but you don’t feel that kind of passion for any particular school.

I think it’s more of a reflection of personality type than anything else - some people are fact-finders and others make decisions quickly. Those people might fall in love at first sight down the line, too, but that doesn’t mean their relationships will be any stronger.

Whichever strategy you use, be confident in your own decision-making skills and know that in the end, the college experience is what you make of it, and you can be happy at a lot of different schools - there is no “the one”!

If you are still struggling with making a decision, you can always come and talk to us! Current clients can go ahead and book a meeting, but for those who are not clients, we have recently introduced our new Post-Decision Senior Strategy Session to help you make the best choice!