Episode 120: Lots of College Options in Our New Workbook

Today, we have figured out a way to talk both about our new book--How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students--and to make good on the title of our current series, Colleges in the Spotlight. As we were writing the book, we realized that we could use a lot of college examples, drawn from our earlier podcast episodes, to illuminate the points we were trying to make. I thought it would be interesting to see just how many colleges were mentioned in the book--and by "mentioned," I mean that they were used to illustrate the answers to some of the 52 questions that teenagers are asked to find the answers to for each college on their Long List of College Options (LLCO). In a way, these colleges are in our spotlight for things that they are doing right or for characteristics they have that are noteworthy. To find out why we mentioned each college, you are going to have to get the book!  1. Colleges in the Spotlight So, here we go. Here are the colleges that we thought were worth mentioning--for some reason or other (they are listed roughly in the order in which they are mentioned in the book, and I might have missed a few): Fordham University (joint program with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater) Richmond, The American International University in London University of Colorado Boulder The University of Rhode Island Tuskegee University University of Iowa University of Vermont University of Delaware University of Wyoming City University of New York (and its Hunter College campus) College of William & Mary University of Pennsylvania Fisk University Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Penn State University of California campuses California State University campuses Cornell University Soka University of America The University of New Mexico Columbia University Brown University Harvard University Barnard College Morehouse College Spelman College Hampden-Sydney College Wabash College Kenyon College Kent State University New York University Carleton College University of Minnesota Milwaukee School of Engineering University of Alaska Fairbanks University of Washington University of New Hampshire Georgia State University Amherst College Vassar College Reed College Hamilton College Colorado College Rice University Duke University California Institute of Technology St. John's College Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of Hawai'i at Mānoa The Evergreen State College Pitzer College (one of the five undergraduate colleges of The Claremont Colleges) Centre College Goucher College Hampshire College Bennington College Sterling College Drexel University Northeastern University St. Michael's College University of Rochester University of Massachusetts Boston That's more than 60 colleges, which is actually quite a few. Of course, you can always refer back to the virtual college tour we did in Episodes 27 through 53 for a discussion of even more colleges, organized by geographic region of the U.S. But the new book doesn't stop with those 60-plus. We also name some great college towns--"great," according to one of the lists of great college towns that publications love to compile. Do you know what colleges are located in these towns? College Station, TX Charlottesville, VA Saratoga Springs, NY Asheville, NC Flagstaff, AZ Boulder, CO Santa Cruz, CA St. Augustine, FL Burlington, VT Annapolis, MD Ann Arbor, MI Athens, GA Oxford, MS Iowa City, IA 2. Now, It's Up to You Now, it's up to you. At least, that is what we say at the end of the book. We wrote this to each student, assuming that he or she had done the assignments as they were presented:  You have done a lot of work to gather information about the colleges on your LLCO. You have completed a College Profile Worksheet on quite a few colleges by now. You have learned more than many high school students know about a variety of specific colleges and about higher education generally.  So, it's time to start comparing and contrasting the colleges you have researched. That will be a long process, which will require analysis and evaluation by you and your parents and perhaps other important family members. And it's okay that it is a long process because this is a big decision for all of you.  Remember that choosing which colleges to apply to can be every bit as important as choosing which college to attend. In an ideal world, you should be happy with every college you apply to because that will take the pressure off as you wait for acceptances to come in.  Of course, you might be more excited about some choices than others, but don't apply to any college that you would not want to attend. That is a waste of your time and money. We are confident that there is a college that you can be admitted to that will make you happy. Even safety schools don't have to be disappointing choices. If they are for you now, you just haven't looked hard enough yet! Get busy.  We mean that last point really sincerely: If your teenager's safety schools are disappointing choices for him or her, you all just haven't looked hard enough yet. There are great colleges--especially some public flagship universities and some large private universities--that are very likely to admit good students, especially those who come from other states. Having a safety school that your teenager does not want to go to is really not having any safety school at all. We mean it when we say, "Look harder." We hope that our new book will help your teenager look harder, think harder, and work harder to expand his or her LLCO, to get exciting colleges onto that LLCO, to learn as much as possible about each one of them (by completing a College Profile Worksheet for each one), and to feel satisfied when all of the applications are submitted--that is, satisfied that all of the colleges he or she applied to are good choices, just for different reasons. And a satisfied teenager is likely to produce a satisfied parent. Or at least it should. Find our books on Amazon! How To Find the Right College: A Workbook for Parents of High School Students (available as a Kindle ebook and in paperback) How To Explore Your College Options: A Workbook for High School Students (available in paperback) Ask your questions or share your feedback by... Leaving a comment on the show notes for this episode at http://usacollegechat.org/episode120 Calling us at (516) 900-6922 to record a question on our USACollegeChat voicemail if you want us to answer your question live on our podcast Connect with us through... Subscribing to our podcast on Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher, or TuneIn Liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter Reviewing parent materials we have available at www.policystudies.org Inquiring about our consulting services if you need individualized help Reading Regina's blog, Parent Chat with Regina