I (16F) am looking into going to a 4 year college, but have no idea where to start. I’m currently looking on how to choose a college, but what else should I prepared for? Scholarships, tours, etc.
BTW I’m in the USA
I (16F) am looking into going to a 4 year college, but have no idea where to start. I’m currently looking on how to choose a college, but what else should I prepared for? Scholarships, tours, etc.
BTW I’m in the USA
Uni programs are flexible at the start of the program. Within the first 3 semesters or so it’s decently easy to change without falling behind as most majors will have bullshit classes that can be taken as free electives as the start of their prereq chain and common things like math, science, and literature that you end up taking first year anyways. So definitely have a couple ideas of what you want to do and take the intro classes and health or something to find out. Take bullshit classes when possible if you’re taking math, science, or major specific courses. It helps keep the workload reasonable.
Just check that the school doesn’t wall off some majors. Some colleges let you freely transfer within liberal arts degree programs but crossing the barrier to eng (eg electrical engineering) has a grade check or some other silly hoop to jump through. It’s usually easier to declare eng then swap within eng or leave eng entirely.
A lot of schools in the US have their own subreddits, you can see what people are up to and complaining about and try and get a feel for the average experience. They’re invaluable when you have to pick a dorm as some colleges (mine included) have a few unrenovated 50year old dorms that are atrocious mixed in with some newer ones and it’s hard to tell online.
There’s a scholarship program associated with the PSAT I believe. It’s the same as the SAT but you just take it as some kind of means testing the school you go to thing. The added bonus is when you take the test for real you’ll be well prepared. If you can cop an SAT prep book, do so. It’s generally pretty valuable. Older used editions can usually be found for cheap online. The math is capped out at 8th grade level iirc. Knowing that can help you grind through the problems and crush it. Reading section is very literalist interpretation of the text. Every answer maps 1:1 with something in the text w/o any additional interpretation. Vocab you unfortunately have to grind and study for but w/e. The writing section is ??? I think schools are going back to SATs with just math and reading and dropping writing. It might be a school by school basis if they care about your SAT score out of 2400 or 1600 for caring about writing or not respectively.
Don’t take the ACT imo unless the specific college “super scores”. Super scoring is the practice of taking your highest score in each section of the SAT and ACT, and converting them to the other and basically taking the max of that. So like if you got a 26 on the math ACT but an 800 on the SAT that would convert to a 36 ACT for your super score.
Tours are okay but supplement them by researching the student orgs on campus and see if there are any clubs or whatever you may want to join. These are more important socially than classes are for making friends through the 4 years in my experience.
For choosing it’s a tradeoff of cost x “prestige” x how close you want your parents. Tbh having my parents nearby made schooling affordable as I could just commute and I never needed to mess around with fakes they would just buy booze for me. But that may not work for everyone it really depends on your situation.
The “Common App” is becoming more accepted by schools with fewer custom addons. For some schools accept the common app but you need to submit an essay on some topic they chose to go with it. This is all done through the common app’s website. Definitely use it, it saves a lot of paperwork and maybe fees. The general guidance from high school counselors is apply to 1 safe school. That’s a local school with median accepted test score and gpa that you exceed. 2 schools that you want to go to and are hovering around the median of test scores. And apply to 1 reach. These are your Ivy’s if you can afford (they usually have decent need-based tuition assistance if you qualify) or the really good public research universities.
FASET is the student aid forms. You get the best loans from them but it’s means tested as fuck. You can get Pell grant too if you qualify as a low income student. But to qualify you need to fill out FASET. Stay away from private loans. These are the ones you hear about people paying off in perpetuity. They have usurious interest rates and limited repayment plan options.