| Research Yourself |
Huh? It sounds weird, but part of finding the best colleges for you is understanding the type of environment you would be most successful in, what is important to you and how you learn. We recommend three excellent personal inventories for every one of our clients.
|
| Personal Style Indicator |
The Online Personal Style Indicator (PSI) is a powerful communication and learning tool. Completely self-administered and self-scored the PSI helps you discover your natural preferences towards time, people, tasks, and situations. Participants identify their specific PSI style pattern(s), which assists them to instantly understand their strengths and potential challenges so they can be more effective at work, in school, and at home.
|
| Values Indicator |
With thousands of users over the years, we continue to be amazed by the high percentage of people who at first have no idea what their core values are, then realize their values are not being represented in their life. Then they realize why they are living unfulfilled lives.
|
| Learning Style Indicator |
Discover how you learn best by completing the Online Learning Style Indicator. This self-administered and self-scored assessment helps you understand your natural learning preferences, your learning style pattern, and your most effective learning strategies.
|
| Journal Your Thoughts |
The journal doesn’t have to be anything fancy; it can be just a simple spiral bound notebook, legal pad, or 3-ring binder. Maybe even your phone has a note taking feature. Doesn't matter where you do it, but you want to have something available to jot down thoughts, ideas and notes you have during your college seearch. This journal is going to be the hub of your college research and you should have it with you all the time.
|
| |
| Research Colleges |
Don’t just apply to a college because it’s down the street or your girlfriend is going there. You need to put some work in on this. There are important questions to be answered. Is this a generous school? Will the environment match my preferences? Is the size of the school something I’ll be comfortable with?
|
| Web Searches and Research |
The Internet has made researching colleges far easier and more effective than even 10 years ago. However, it has also made information overload a very common problem. Be specific in your research. Skip Google, Bing, and Yahoo. They are not specific enough to be of any help. Stay with college search engines like eduLaunchpad.com.
|
| Register with Colleges |
If you find a college interesting, make sure you let them know by signing up for information on their website. Look for prospective student information or email newsletters in the admission department page of the college website. The contact you make with colleges may have an impact on how seriously the school responds to your applications.
|
| Follow Colleges on Social Sites |
Social sites are great places to get a feel for what the college is like. On these sites you can hear from other students and alumni and get a never before offered peak into campus life. Make sure you check out the presence that colleges have on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
|
| Speak With College Students |
Here again, the social sites are a gold mine of information. If you don’t know many students at a particular college, then you can always get connected to hundreds of them through social sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. Take some time to make some connections and ask real people what they think about the colleges you are considering.
|
| Visit the Campuses |
Although the Internet has made researching colleges much easier, nothing replaces having boots on the ground. Make sure you schedule times to visit colleges. Initially, you may be checking out schools you’re really not very interested in. But even those visits will give you great information to help you determine what is important to you. Later in the process, it may be that last visit which tells you which school you actually want to commit to. Check out the holidays and vacation time you have from your high school and try to schedule your college visits around those as much as possible. Otherwise, use up all the college visit time your high school gives you. You might need to use up a few days they don’t give you as well.
|