Building your college list

~ Emily Ball

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when trying to decide which colleges you want to apply to.

Here are some things to think about as you make that decision:

  • Size of college
    • How large do you want your classes to be?
    • What resources are important to you to have in a college?
    • Do you mind if TAs teach your classes instead of professors?
  • Location
    • Do you want to stay in-state? Go out of state?
    • How far from home do you want to go?
    • If you do want to go away from home, be sure to take into consideration how much it will cost you to go home. How far is campus from an airport/train station/bus station? How long would it take if you didn’t have a car?
  • Public vs. private
  • 2 year vs. 4 year
  • How much will it cost (total) to attend? What can you/your family realistically afford? How many loans are you/your family comfortable taking out?
  • Majors offered? Possible major? Career options?
    • If you are applying to a school for a certain program, make sure you REALLY want to do that; otherwise, if you switch majors, you’ll be stuck
  • HBCU? Women’s college?
  • Be realistic:
    • For the top, most highly competitive schools, you probably need a 3.5+ GPA and 1000 SAT
      • This is even more important for STEM fields (3.5+ GPA, 1100 SAT)
    • This is not to discourage you! You can still get into a great school — just be realistic!

Other tips:

  • If you can, visit the college!
    • The only real way to see how the campus feels is to visit it – you might be surprised how different it can be to see a campus online vs. actually be there in person
  • Talk to current students/alumni at colleges you’re interested in to get the real scoop on what that college is like
    • Contact us if you’re interested – we have Yleana alums at a wide range of colleges all across the country
  • Make sure you’re applying to a range of colleges – some reaches, some matches, and some safeties
  • Make sure you’re applying to colleges that meet financial need

⇒Start here with Yleana’s curated lists of colleges and programs⇐

Other resources:

  • College Board’s Big Future College Search
    • You can input characteristics and it will output a list of colleges matching those characteristics
    • Can also find the percentage of need met at each school
  • College Scorecard
    • Shows graduation rate, median salary for students 10 years after college graduation – look up schools you’re considering
  • College Simply
    • Search for schools by SAT score or GPA
    • Tells you how likely you are to be accepted
  • College Greenlight
    • Lists of fly-in programs, other features
    • Similar to Big Future
  • College Confidential
    • Get a feel of the school
  • Niche
    • Grades certain aspects of a school (campus safety, location, food)
    • Can search by your SAT score
  • Cappex
    • Will provide a graph showing you where you fit compared to other applicants who were rejected or accepted based on your GPA and SAT scores
    • Can search any existing school in the US
    • Will recommend schools to you
  • ScholarMatcher
    • This is an interactive online college search tool. You can browse the list or take a quiz to help narrow down a list of colleges that might be a good fit for you
    • All the colleges on this list are specifically chosen because they support students whose families earn less than $50,000 per year

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