 |
|
College crunch: taming the selection processBy Jan McDaniel As your son or daughter prepares to attend college, search and selection may loom as an uncontrollable process. Finding the right, affordable school where your child will be happy and receive a quality education is no simple task. For starters, factors to consider include educational programs, costs, financial aid availability, location, housing and campus life. And don't forget those application forms and filing deadlines. So, where do you start? The good news is that an organized, realistic approach makes the process more manageable. Help and research material is available from a variety of sources. Parents may recall mailing off for college catalogs back in high school, but by providing more information faster, the Internet has dramatically changed today's college quest. Not only do individual colleges and universities maintain sites; students can search the Web for scholarships and loans. They can file school and financial applications online. Information overload can also prove intimidating. "It's easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of information available," says Larry Gerber, president of Scholarships.com LLC. He advised sticking to a few Web sites that consolidate many resources. Scholarships.com matches students' interests and abilities to appropriate scholarship sources. Free online scholarship searches are also available at FastWeb.com and through sources at UCLA's Scholarship Resource Center. To search college profiles, visit USNews.com or CollegeView.com. In addition, every college has a Web site. Although the sites provide basic selective public relations material, students can email admissions offices to ask specific questions. College fairs, a traditional source of information for prospective students and their parents, will go virtual beginning this fall. About a thousand colleges are expected to participate in National Association for College Admission Counseling's (NACAC) interactive college fairs. Through the NACAC Web page, students and parents will chat with school representatives and tour campuses. When possible, a real campus visit remains the best way to form firsthand impressions, advises Marybeth Kravets, president-elect of NACAC and a college consultant at Deerfield High School outside Chicago. You can walk the campus, visit dorms, the library, cafeterias, student centers, bookstores, and other facilities. Kravets suggests stopping students and talking to them about the school. You can also meet personally with the school representatives or admissions counselors. If a visit isn't possible, the next best thing is talking with school representatives at college fairs or college nights. In addition to the Web, other information sources include computerized college information systems, school catalogs or videos, high school counselors, university admissions counselors, and college guidebooks. NACAC recommends college guides or magazine "best of" rating lists be used only to supplement other information. To gear-up for the college hunt, Kravets offers these tips:
Even a well-planned effort will be painstaking and time-consuming, but worth the trouble. As Gerber points out, "the cost of not going to college is much higher than going."
Here are a just a few available resources:Planning
Free Scholarship Searches
Jan McDaniel is a frequent contributor to BlueSuitMom.com She is a freelance journalist, former newspaper reporter, and author of 25 novels.
|
|
|