The Bumpy, Confusing Road to College

Suppose you get offers from multiple colleges. Great news, right? But how do you choose among them? Or maybe you're not quite there yet — you've decided you want to go to a selective four year college, but don't know where to apply. Or you're doing well in high school and you want to aim high.

Ed100 offers a tool to help students make thoughtful choices about college.

How does the process actually work? This post equips you with some tools to take the mystery out of it.

What's your "why" for spending all this money?

Before we go there (and we will), let's take a step back. There are many good reasons to go to college, and getting into a good college is a fine thing to want. But it's also smart to go in with your eyes open and your bank statement in plain view.

Working your way through college in four years directly out of high school used to be difficult, but achievable. Today it is mathematically impossible. Many students that begin college find that they cannot afford to finish it.

According to Ben Casselman, senior editor and chief economics writer of 538.com, "Nearly one in five Americans age 25 to 34 has some college credits but no degree, and a growing share of them have student debt." Aggregate college debt in America is about $1.7 trillion, a sum even larger than credit card debt.

America's most famous colleges — the ones that routinely show up on "best college" rankings — are primarily colleges for the rich: they enroll more students from families in the top 1% of the nation's income distribution than they do from the bottom 60%. About 40% of children from America's richest families attend an Ivy League or other "elite" college. Students who attend these schools tend to do very well in life, and for students from families of modest means a diploma from an elite college can change everything. But the number of seats available in these schools is tiny, and fairly fixed. Over time the number of candidates for these seats has grown, making elite colleges much more selective than they were a generation ago.

Casselman cautions that the college experiences depicted in movies and media misrepresent reality for most students. For example, he points out that most colleges aren't particularly selective:

College can be an engine for social mobility, and some schools are particularly notable for being the launching pad for the American dream. But most of these launching pad colleges are on a different list than the elite schools.

California's college system

Students in California are fortunate to have access to a strong three-tiered system of relatively affordable public colleges and universities, thanks to a Master Plan for higher education established in the state more than half a century ago. Many students in California begin their education in the affordable Community College system, then (with difficulty, unfortunately) transfer into the California State University, the University of California or elsewhere.

In the end, from a career perspective, the school where you earn your highest degree is the one most noticed on your resume. Barack Obama is better known for having attended Harvard than Occidental.

Do Colleges Want You?

Whenever a teacher assigns a major project, the process begins with a rubric — a scorecard that breaks the work into parts. To earn a top grade, you have to do well on every part, but not all parts are of equal value. The rubric helps students know what counts, so they can manage their time and invest their energy where it will count. The rubric also helps teachers evaluate work and assign a grade.

Colleges look at your application through the lens of what they need.

Colleges admissions officers use rubrics, too. They have only a certain number of seats to fill. They must plow through great piles of applications, scoring quickly as they go. Rubrics differ from school to school and department to department, of course, but the big categories aren't rocket science:

What Do You Want, Student?

A rubric can help you make a good college choice. Build your rubric using the Ed100 tool.

What might be less obvious in this process is that you need a rubric, too. Sometimes students apply to tons for schools, then see where they get in and then visit to see what clicks. In the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic, students didn't have this option. How do you think it through and make a good choice?

To evaluate whether one college will be better for you than another, you need to know about the colleges, but you also need to know what matters to you. Building a useful rubric is difficult, so we thought it might be helpful to give you a head start. In true Ed100 fashion, let's break it down.

100 Pennies. Suppose you had 100 pennies to represent what matters to you, broadly, in choosing a school.

Take those pennies and divide them into only the following piles, representing your best guess about what matters to you in a college:

• Academics
• Access to Family
• The College Experience
• Career Success
• Affordability

These aren't the only considerations, by a long shot, but it helps to start with a point of view.

Choose your Decision Factors. The next step, as you learn about colleges, is to get more specific about the factors that will drive your decisions. Open the Ed100 How to Choose a College tool. It's a free tool built as a Google Spreadsheet. It's not fancy, but you don't need fancy, right? You need clarity.

After printing the instructions, start with the Interview tab in the sheet. It's meant to be a little like having a college counselor guiding you and asking the questions that actually matter. If you follow the instructions, you'll have a your own rubric. You'll also have some helpful guidance about what to ask as you investigate college options.

Review and Rate Schools. Once you have used the Interview to define your decision factors, the Ed100 How to Choose a College tool gives you scorecard to evaluate each school you research (or, ideally, visit). Use the tool, and you will literally have a list of schools stack-ranked on your own terms. If you follow the instructions in the scorecard, you'll have a big leg up on writing your application, too.

Make choices. You can't apply to a zillion schools, and you shouldn't apply just to the amazing schools at the top of your dream list. You will probably want to apply to a number of schools, including some that are a "stretch," some that are a reasonable "target" match, and some where you are "likely" to get in. (Some schools are so selective that college counselors have started calling them "lottery" schools!) As you review schools using the Ed100 How to Choose a College tool you can identify your likelihood of getting into each one.

Oh, Yeah… the Money. By identifying researching and ranking schools in each likelihood tier, you will have a basis for making choices among them with money in the equation. If you are a very strong student with a compelling story, don't be too quick to write off those selective colleges. Financial aid exists. If a college decides they really want you, they may offer scholarships or find ways to help.

The Dangerous Trick to Improve Your Odds: Early Decision

Many colleges allow students to apply on an "Early Decision" (ED) basis. You need to understand this. ED isn't just about sending your application in early, which is called "Early Action" (EA). It's a contract. You may only apply to ONE school for early decision, so if you use Early Decision you'd better be thoroughly sure of your choice. If accepted, you go.

At many schools, committing to Early Decision can boost your odds. But there's a catch...

Remember the part about "yield"? Colleges have an incentive to extend offers that they know will be accepted. A high yield score serves as evidence that students really want to attend a college, which boosts the college's standing in college reviews. Schools like to admit qualified students Early Decision, because every student they admit in this way is a sure bet. At many schools, applying ED can boost your odds of being admitted.

But this isn't true of all schools. The percentage of the freshman class admitted via early decision varies greatly from one college to another. Data collected by the College Data Set consortium shows that some schools fill more than half of their seats early. It is really important for students to understand how this works in the colleges they apply to — it can be the difference between getting in and having no change (Follow the link to see examples.)

Colleges share with one another the names of the students they admit via Early Decision. This cooperation (or perhaps collusion) saves them time and helps colleges avoid extending wasted offers that would reduce their yield.

There's a very important catch. The Early Decision system might help you if are able to pay full tuition, or if you are willing and able to accept whatever financial aid package the college offers. But Early Decision can put you in a terrible negotiating position, so choose carefully.

As you do your research, the Ed100 How to Choose a College tool provides space for you to take notes on each school's financial aid policies and the percentage of students admitted via early decision.

Updated April 2020, August 2021, Feb 2022