iapplytocollege

This is the beginning step that you should start as soon as possible, preferably in your end of Sophomore year or beginning of Junior year, this will help lead you through college visiting, applications, and demonstrating interest.

I like to make a google sheets for better organization and a helpful application to quantify colleges with qualitative personal data and research. First it is important to find colleges in your field of interest and/or majors and colleges that you would like to apply to.

Then I start making my list:

Then I start my ranking system with important factors to me, major program/program of interest, internship opportunities, 5-year masters degree, dual- bachelor’s program, teacher to student ratio, class size, school size, technology, campus, reputation of professors, residential life, courses, clubs, sports, monetary, etc. Then I rank each of these categories out of 10 for each college and university.

Then I rank each subtopic out of 10 in regards of importance to myself in regards to a college, 10 is of the highest importance and 1 is the least importance.

Then you multiply each number under each subtopic by the importance number you gave it and add up all the products of the subtopics for each college. For example, let’s do college A: 8 times 9 (major program) = 72 then add 72 to 3 times 7 (social life) = 21 then add to 4 times 5 (campus) =20 then add to 9 times 6 (Internships) = 54 and then lastly add to 2 times 3 (courses) = 6. You then get a total score of 173 for College A. When you are finished doing the scoring for each subtopic and college you made on your list, the college of university with the highest score would be your top choice, this can obviously adjust as you visit schools however.

Your final list should look something like above!