Summer is for fun and sun and naps…but also, if you just finished up your Sophomore or Junior year of high school, for taking real steps towards deciding which colleges you’re going to apply to.
Think of it as a favor you can do for your future self: if you put in some legwork now, your junior and senior years will be MUCH less stressful.
Because (in case you haven’t already heard!) the application process involves spinning a LOT of plates at once. You’ve got to secure letters of recommendation; study for and take the SAT and ACT, often multiple times; draft a killer main college essay and supplemental essays; and fill out the actual application questions themselves. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
And in my fifteen years of test prep and college coaching, I’ve found that the best way for high schoolers to avoid tapping out around mile 13 of that marathon is to start off with a genuinely exciting vision for the higher ed experience they could be having in a few years.
If you’ve just wrapped up 11th grade, you should currently be putting the finishing touches on the list of your target colleges so you can start getting all those moving parts of your college applications in order!
But even if you’re only a rising 11th grader (i.e. just finished 10th grade) right now, you should still have your college list on your mind. If you don’t even know the type of schools you may wish to apply to, you won’t be able to craft your standardized testing Game Plan, determine WHICH tests (if any) you’ll need to take, and create a target score to work towards.
So, as you can see, staying on top of the whole college process begins with…giving some thought to which colleges you want to endure this process FOR. And you’ve got to start SOMEWHERE. So let’s get into it: how should you craft YOUR list of colleges, especially in the year 2025?
ARTICLE CONTENTS
1. Watch this article as a video
2. Factors to consider as you make your college list
a. Logistical dealbreakers and requirements
c. What’s your ideal learning environment look like?
d. Which activities and opportunities do you want access to?
3. How to narrow down the colleges you’re applying to: scores and grades
4. Conclusion
Watch this article as a video:
How to choose which colleges to apply to
I’m going to give you a few categories of key questions to chew on, beginning with the most crucial questions and working down to the less essential (but still relevant) ones. Your job is to answers these Qs for yourself, through a combination of reflection and research. Luckily the Internet makes the latter task surprisingly straightforward if you’re willing to do a bit of legwork! (And we never skip leg day at the gym, right?)
1. Identify Any Logistical Must-Haves and Hard Nos
The make-or-break logistical factors about where you spend four years of your life mostly involve location and cost. For instance:
Do you have a strict budget for how much you can pay for tuition? If so, what IS that budget?
Do you require financial aid or merit aid and need to prioritize colleges that offer it generously?
Do you need to attend school close to your family?
Do you need warm weather? Or do you have a really tough time with the heat, and thus need a cooler climate?
Do you NEED proximity to a big city and the culture and diversity that entails?
Do you NEED to be in a more suburban, remote location?
Furthermore, in light of recent Supreme Court rulings and Executive Orders that have stripped certain groups of people of their rights in certain states, you might ALSO need to ask yourself some additional questions:
If you were assigned female at birth, is it important to you to be able to make informed healthcare decisions about your own body? If it is, you might need to limit your college search to states that don’t force women’s bodies into childbirth and that provide access to contraception.
If you were assigned male at birth and might become sexually intimate with people who can become pregnant—and you do NOT desire to become a parent during your college tenure—then, you, too, might consider applying only to institutions in states that allow more reproductive healthcare options for people with uteruses.
If you identify as LGBTQ+, is it important to you that you’re legally protected from discrimination? If it is, you might limit your college search to states that ensure equality for all peoples, sexual orientation and gender expression aside.
If you identify as trans or nonbinary, you may want to consider colleges only in states where you have the healthcare options that you need and require.
If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," consider that some schools abroad might offer greater safety and/or happiness for sexual, gender, and racial minorities right now, too. If you do some research and determine that foreign study seems like a favorable option for you, I've written guides for Americans applying to schools in England, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, and Canada.
It’s really handy to figure out from Day 1 what your hard Musts and Nos are, because that way you don’t have to thoroughly research every single school out there. Instead, you can filter out the “Nopes” quickly and then only do a deeper dive into the ones that are left over! (And you should definitely only visit the campuses of schools that make it past this first stage, btw!)
Some excellent resources for this initial search stage are: CollegeData.com, The Fiske Guide to Colleges, and Princeton Review’s The Best 386 Colleges.
2. What Do You Want to Study?
I get it: if you’re applying to college, you’re still a teen. You don’t necessarily know exactly what you want to major in (let alone what field you want to work in) down the line! That said, I find that many of my private tutoring clients already do have some sense of their academic and/or creative passions—so you might have that hunch, too.
Of course, that’s not to say your course of study can’t CHANGE over time. My tutoring clients often start out as avid dancers or basketball players, only to later pursue careers in medicine or law, or to become famous musicians. However, if you DO have a certain strong interest or career aspiration (even if it’s just a vague liking), it makes finding your great college fit that much simpler.
For example, if you’re already positive you want to study something highly specific, like exercise science or opera singing, then a college or university with only a general “biology” or “fine arts” major might not make the most sense for you.
If, on the other hand, you have NO IDEA what you want to study—not even a “something in the humanities” or “maybe a STEM field” direction…then knowing THAT can help hone which kind of colleges you put on your list, too! If this is you, you should apply to more flexible schools, like liberal arts programs where you don’t have to declare your major right away, or colleges of “Arts and Sciences” within a larger university…instead of the more narrowly focused colleges (the “College of Veterinary Sciences,” etc.) that comprise many larger universities.
To research this question further (after you peruse the more general college guides linked above), I’d visit colleges’ individual websites and click on “Majors” or “Academics” or “Departments” to see if they can meet your subject-matter-specific goals.
3. Do you need a particular learning environment?
After you figure out the “what (you want to study)”, make sure the “how” works for you as well. Ask yourself:
Do you need small, interactive classes to really “get” it?
Do you need a university with more substantial academic advising and hand-holding to guide you through your four years?
Or are you down with big lecture halls where you have less interaction and have to be more self-motivated and self-directed to learn the material?
Are you a great self-advocate who can seek out the opportunities and guidance you need?
Do you have learning differences and need to attend somewhere with that offers support in that arena?
Once you’ve sketched out your learning style with these questions, you’ll know that if a college doesn’t fit that vibe at all….you can cross it off your list!
Then, it’s time for deeper, more involved research, like visiting the campus, attending a virtual tour or information session, or even emailing that college’s regional admissions officers with your questions!
4. Which activities and opportunities do you need in your life?
After you’ve determined that a school is located somewhere that you like, falls within your budget, offers the academic departments (or flexibility) you need and the right learning environment for you…it’s time for the fun stuff!
You want to make sure that you’ll have access to the activities that make you feel happy and fulfilled so that you can spend your next four years exploring and expanding upon your areas of interest—and getting a clearer picture of your true passions and purpose.
But in order to do that, we need to start with what you’re interested in NOW. So ask yourself:
Is there a certain extracurricular activity you’ll want to keep up with in college?
Is your particular sport offered at the college? Is the team on your level/would you actually get to play?
Are there performance opportunities (if you’re a performer)?
If you want to study abroad, does this college offer opportunities to do so without that time away from campus interfering with graduating on schedule?
Do undergraduates get to do research (for those future scientists out there)?
Does this college have communities you want to be part of or ARE already a part of?
If the answer is “no,” is it feasible to start your OWN club or group at that institution?
To research this, I would go to each college’s website and click on “Student Life,” “Extracurriculars,” “Clubs,” or similarly named pages. Take note of what’s available, what’s NOT, and even go poking around various student orgs’ social media pages to see if they’re still active and what their vibe is. If you haven’t visited the campus already, or won’t be able to, you can also get a sense of a given college’s vibe from CampusReel.org, a really cool resource that offers college video tours and reviews created by students.
How to narrow down the list of colleges you're applying to
If you’ve made it through steps 1-4, you’ve probably generated at least a handful of schools on the table that meet all your criteria thus far. There might even (hopefully) be a couple you’re really excited about!
So now that we’ve done some research and begun to create a vision, we need to get a bit technical and realistic, too.
For each school, go to CollegeData.com or https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/ and look up the range of GPA and test scores for the most recent class of incoming freshmen. The ranges these websites provide usually represent the middle 50% of the class (or from 25th percentile to 75th percentile), meaning that HALF the students scored within that range, while a fourth scored BELOW and a fourth scored ABOVE.
Mark each college on your preliminary list as one of the following:
Do you fall WITHIN their range of grades and standardized test scores (if they require test scores)? Then that school is a “Target School.”
Are your grades and test scores BELOW incoming freshmen’s range of GPA and test scores? Then that school is a “Reach School” for you.
Are your grades and test scores (if required) ABOVE their middle 50% range of GPA and test scores? Then, for YOU, that would be a “Favorable School.”
Once you have this info collected, here’s what you do with it:
If you just completed your Junior year
You are done, or almost done, with testing (i.e. have only a couple attempts left). At this point in time, you might be able to improve your SAT or ACT scores a fair amount (and if you’d like help in doing so quickly, consider shooting me a message or checking out my cram plan ebooks and courses!).
BUT, your cumulative GPA isn’t really going to move much before your college apps are due. So however you labeled the schools on your list is likely the final state of affairs.
When you make your ultimate college list, you want to make sure to have a significant number of “Target” and “Favorable” schools in it! They can’t all be “Reach” schools! So, if you ultimately want to apply to a dozen colleges, maybe half of them (6) are “Targets,” a fourth (3) are “Favorables” and a fourth (3) are “Reaches.”
If you’re starting your junior year this fall
Don’t get discouraged by the test score requirements! You likely haven’t taken the SAT or ACT yet, or at least have several more test attempts ahead. And guess what? Now that we know what scores to aim for, we can create a Target Score and work to get there!
It’s not unusual for my private students to increase 5-7 ACT composite points or 200-400 SAT points, given my streamlined process that gets superior results in the most efficient timespan possible.
So DON’T let the test score ranges stop you from reaching your goals, but DO make sure your GPA is in line with the schools you’re aiming for. And keep coming back to this list; you will change it as you find out more information and clarify what you want your college experience to be like.
Conclusion
So, there you have it: my 5-Step method for figuring out which colleges to apply to.
If you still need help whittling down your list and discovering hidden college gems that are a perfect fit for your particular needs, I have a referral for you who does JUST that: Abby Siegel, college entrance consultant.
And if you need help organizing and crafting your college application essays or dramatically increasing your SAT or ACT scores, see how you can work with me here, or check out my self-study ebooks and online courses here.
