Hey Anon: I would recommend you pay attention to 3 different factors when it comes to choosing a school:
1. Money. There’s no point in dreaming and drooling over your perfect school if you can’t afford it. We’ve all been there, it really sucks, but unless you think you can get enough scholarships or you can afford it out of pocket, I wouldn’t bother getting caught up in it. Some schools you just have to give up otherwise you’ll be struggling badly financially later on.
2. Distance from home. When I graduated high school, I was all ‘I hate this place, can’t wait to leave, don’t want to come back ever again, I’ll never miss it here.’ Boy was I wrong. I moved to a school 13 hours from home and it was only two weeks later before I was missing home and crying to go back. I love my school, I really do, but I wish I had looked into schools closer to home. It’s expensive travelling back home and I can only visit over breaks. This doesn’t mean you have to stay in a school right at home, but keep that in mind because you will miss it even if you don’t think you will.
3. How does the school treat you? I didn’t do a great job when searching for colleges. It sounds like you’re way ahead of the game, when I was in junior year, I hadn’t even begun researching colleges, and you’ve already visited seven. Way to go! I only searched into two schools. I realized the first school I was interested in rarely ever sent me mail. They rarely emailed me or tried to get my attention, and anytime I had a question, it took days, sometimes weeks to hear back from them. My second option, however, was constantly sending me mail, emails, trying to get my attention. Anytime I emailed with a question, I would receive a response that same day, latest the next day. My second option even went as far as inviting me to visit the campus, buying my mother and I plane tickets to travel there, and then paying for our hotels and meals. During my visit (which wouldn’t have happened if the school had not paid for it), I realized just how much these people cared about me. They were friendly and really wanted to help me in any way. Any question I had, any comments, any concerns, they were prepared to talk to me and address any issues I had. I realized if I ever had a problem while in school, I would be in good hands. These people would help me with my problems, where as the previous school I had looked at probably would just shrug and tell me there was nothing they could do about it. This was a very important factor for me.
In the end, my second option offered me more scholarships as well, so it was definitely the winning option for me. That’s just my experience and some things I wish I would have paid a bit more attention to. Good luck with your search, I hope you find somewhere you love!!
