One of the most important decisions, you will make in your lifetime is deciding on the college you will attend. How do most students choose their college? In order to investigate this question, let’s review some of the things you need to take into consideration.

Some students have an ideal conception of the college they wish to attend.   While this college may not exist in reality, it is used as a backdrop for their eventual college choice. These students have a mental list or a written one, of what they value most. This list may contain such factors as teacher reputation, school rating as generated by some rating agency scale or a professional assessment from some other source, and whether it offers a major compatible with expressed student interests.

Others  may base their college choice on what peers  or parents have to say about a given college. In other words, the more people who say good things about a particular college, the more likely it will be selected. Still other potential students, choose a college based on its propinquity or on economic factors, among others.

No matter how you go about selecting a school, you must first decide what you want to accomplish there. Generate a list of the factors you believe to be most important in making your final higher education choice. Then, discuss the list with your parents, teachers and peers to determine what they think is most significant. In short, maximize input from a variety of people and written sources and then make your selection.

Finally, in making this critical decision, you may want to use a simple aid to help.   You can for example, assign points to each item on your list.  Start with one hundred points and allocate them as you see fit.  But remember, you only have one hundred points to distribute, so if you have thirty items and you assign eighty points to a single item, you have only twenty points left to distribute over your remaining items.  So be very analytical in your point allocation.