If you've completed
step one in your DIY college admissions efforts, your prospective college freshman should be looking at a list of 20 or 30 possible schools. Now it's time for a reality check:
- Surf the Sites: Hand the list to your college freshman-to-be and send him off to cruise those colleges' web sites. The easiest way to do it is from a hub, such as the About.com A to Z college listing, which has easy links to 125 universities, or the College Board site, which lets you type in any college name. It retrieves the incoming freshman profile and gives you a link to the university's web site, as well. There, you can get a virtual campus tour, scout out majors, the course catalog, the Greek scene or dorm situation. School web sites are an excellent way to discover that your trombonist can't play at Loyola Marymount, because their music department has no brass program, or that your language enthusiast can major in Russian but not Italian at Willamette. (College fairs can be helpful too, but take a peek at the College Fair 101 survival tips first.)
- Reality Check: Check the incoming freshman profile on each college's web site. (They're often linked to the admissions web page, but if you have trouble finding it, just type "freshman profile" into the university site's search box and hit return.) This profile gives you the average range of GPA, SAT and ACT stats for the most recent incoming freshman class - and the rate at which admissions competition has ratcheted up in recent years means you need to look at the most recent information possible. Your child's GPA and test scores should fall into the middle or upper end of the school's incoming freshman class. Unless he is a bassoon-playing, Mock Trial winning, starting quarterback who spends his leisure time fundraising for the orphanage he started in Myanmar, start crossing off schools whose numbers don't match his.
- Next Step: When you're done - your child has vetted the online sites, taken the virtual tours and checked his stats - it's time to sit down and take a good look at that list. It's the same one your high-priced private college counselor would have generated, but it costs thousands less. In fact, it's free. And it’s time to start visiting schools.
