As this week’s deluge of college acceptances floods into the houses of seniors across the country, I consider myself lucky to be done with the whole process. However, many of my friends are not as fortunate, and are now faced with perhaps the toughest decision of their lives (so far): picking a college.

“Choice” is the buzzword that seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue at school. Several of my friends have already heard back from all their colleges and have many to choose from. Others do not have the luxury of six or seven potential choices, but they don’t seem to envy those who received the thick envelope from multiple colleges. The trend I have noticed is that many of my peers simply don’t know which college they want to go to and feel overwhelmed by all the choices. One of my friends equated it to reading a menu with dozens of options; most of them look delicious, so it feels impossible to narrow the choices down to just one.

Here’s one example: Student A applied to nine schools and was accepted by six of them. Together, they’re a representative sample of just about every type of college: big universities, small liberal arts colleges, some with big party scenes, some focused more on academics, and various geographic locations. Her problem is that she likes them all equally, and can envision herself being happy at any of them. What is she to do? Read More »

Remember when you were in high school and you began to hunt for a college? As if you weren’t having enough trouble balancing those AP classes and inevitable girl drama and all of a sudden – BAM – here come like 10,000 books/essays/magazines/guides/counselors bombarding you with information on choosing the right college.

• Do you want big or small?

• Liberal arts? Science? Big city? Small campus? Close to home? Great sports teams?

Some books had statistics. Others had tests to place you in the right “type” of school. Still others were filled with advice from the students who went there. But where was the guarantee that any of this research would put us in a school that we loved, that would get us where we wanted to in life, and that would ultimately be our perfect fit?

According to some research over at the New York Times, the guarantee doesn’t exist. And if we do happen to find that perfect place, all that crap we researched does nothing to guide us. Read More »