Campus Experience
The first step in determining where to go to college is determining your options for what type of campus experience you will have. You can live on or near campus. You can commute to campus traveling by car or public transportation to attend classes, visit the library, and participate in other activities. You can attend classes online and potentially never set foot on campus.When you attend college and live on campus or near campus in student housing, and you work on campus or near campus, the campus is the center of your universe. Most of your interactions will be with other people associated with the campus. This is what we generally think of when we think of the traditional college experience. If your primary experience in attending college is the college life experience, your best option is a residential experience.
If you live with your parents or at least not with other students and commute to campus, then your college interactions will be fewer. The more hours that you work off campus, the fewer interactions you will have with others from the college. In fact, the more hours worked off campus, the less likely you are to stay enrolled to graduation. As a commuter student, you will still have the college experience, but it will not be the same as students who are on campus. This option can save money but commuting adds its own expense in time and money.
If you attend college online, your experience will primarily be the classroom experience. Online colleges often offer clubs or other online activities, but it is difficult to create the experiences of a traditional college. This option provides the most convenience and flexibility.
Some colleges offer low-residency programs. Typically, these are professional graduate programs designed for working students. Some classes and learning experiences are offered on campus potentially on weekends or in week-long residencies. Other classes are offered online. This hybrid approach offers most of the flexibility of online learning while still including some of the on-campus experience.
The first step in deciding where to college is to identify your options for where you can go to college. If you have family or work responsibilities that prevent you from re-locating to attend college, your options are limited to schools that are local, offer online courses and programs, or have low residency options where you only need to be on campus a limited amount of time.
If you have the flexibility to relocate, your options are much greater. Generally, being farther away from home increases expense for traveling back home and state schools offer discounts to residents. Tuition can be much greater attending a public college out-of-state. (In some states, though, the in-state tuition is high enough that leaving the state can be a better option.)
College as Life Experience
The traditional value of college has been the experience of attending college as a young adult making the transition from living with parents to becoming a productive member of society. College provides a unique opportunity to take classes, exploring a variety of academic and professional disciplines. The real impact, though, occurs outside of the classroom. Campus jobs can become the foundations for post-college careers. In my case, my first management experience was in the cafeteria. My career in information technology began with a series of part-time jobs working with computers.Except for joining military service, college provides a unique life experience that cannot be duplicated. The downside to the life experience of college is the expense. To maximize the impact, students should live on campus or at least near campus with other students. This adds room and board to the cost of tuition. Students need to be aware of the total cost of college attendance and not just the price of tuition.
While students can commute to campus and can participate in the campus experience, it is much more difficult. First, the time to commute to campus means less time for the college experience. Second, living at home can be a pull away from developing new relationships at college. If your purpose in attending college is the college experience and finding your community, living on or near campus is by far the best option. The good news is that this also opens you to the most options about where to go to college.
If your goal is learning or the achievement of being a college graduate, you have more options. You can attend college on campus or online. Commuting will be less of an issue if your goal is the degree more than the traditional college experience.
College for Career Preparation
If your purpose is to use college to develop career opportunities, how you attend college will depend on your career goals. The ABA only accredits law schools that are face-to-face, so online law school is of limited value if you want to take the Bar exam and practice law. Some areas of study clearly are best done in-person, like surgical technology or welding or most types of engineering. Any study that requires special equipment or physical manipulation of tools or supplies is best done when the professor can provide immediate feedback on student performance and coach on proper procedures.Some career programs are offered at a limited number of schools. When I was first a dean, aviation was one of my programs. Very few colleges have aviation programs. We had students who came from many states away for this program. If you have a career in mind, your research might identify a limited number of options for study.
Personal Feasibility and Preference
A major consideration in where to go to college is what is feasible for you. If you have work, family, or other responsibilities, then your only options might be attending something local or online. While this makes it a challenge to have the traditional college experience, but if your goal is to obtain a college degree, then this is not an issue. Online education has grown largely to serve the needs of non-traditional students who could not quit their jobs and move their family so they could go to college. Community colleges and career colleges also tailor their offerings to students who need to study at night or in accelerated programs that provide the quickest path to graduation.Even if you can move to go to college, you may not want to. I went to a good high school in a small city in Michigan. Almost everyone in my high school who went to college went to a school in the state of Michigan. Meanwhile, I had friends in the suburbs of Chicago where almost everyone went out-of-state for college. The difference was tradition and expectations. You must find what is right for you. I applied for five college, and three were out-of-state. One of those turned me down, and in the end, I picked the University of Michigan because it was much less expensive than the other options. Even though I was only 2 hours from home, I went home rarely, and I stayed in Ann Arbor during the summer to work and study.
The key question is whether you can and desire to move for college and if so, how far. While the colleges I applied to were private schools more expensive than Michigan, sometimes the less expensive option is farther from home. Travel might be an additional expense, but if you are only planning to come home for Thanksgiving, the holidays, and maybe summer, that does not need to be a huge cost. The real question is whether you and your family will be okay if you only come home a few times a year. This is a very personal issue with no right or wrong answer except for the answer that works for you.
If you know you need to stay local or attend online, this narrows your search for colleges. If you can travel, then you have a wider set of colleges to select from. Generally, you will want to narrow your search down to an area just to make your research more feasible.
Most people visit colleges in the summer. This is a convenient time for high school students, but it is not the best time to visit campus. First, students are not on campus, which makes it harder to get a sense of the community. Second, weather in the summer is very different than in the winter. Maine is beautiful in the summer, but unless you really like snow, it is less so in winter. In college, you will spend a great deal of time outside walking between classes and other buildings.
Another set of factors to consider is the community for the college. Colleges can be in urban areas where the campus is a seamless part of the city. The Loop area of Chicago is home to multiple colleges and even has student housing though the campus buildings look like the office towers that are their neighbors. Colleges can also be in suburban areas of cities. Northwestern University’s main campus is just north of Chicago, where it has a traditional college campus, yet the city is easily accessible. Other colleges are in small towns and rural areas. Miami University of Ohio has a lovely campus in Oxford, Ohio with no local expressways and not much to the town beyond the university.
Each of these settings offers advantages. Urban colleges mean being part of an urban environment with the cultural and social opportunities that go with a big city. A small-town campus means a greater focus on campus life and activities on campus. What type of space that makes sense for you depends on you, and it is worth visiting to get a sense of what you like and feels comfortable.
I know a daughter of a colleague from the suburbs of Chicago who started college in New York City. After a year, she transferred to a college in downtown Chicago. One of her frustrations in New York was that most of her classmates were close enough to home they would take a train home for the weekend. She only lasted one term in Chicago. The program she was in was mainly online, so she did not have much opportunity to find a community of interest with others in her major. Her third stop was a university in rural Illinois where she has found her place. Her biases and perceptions had ruled-out this school early in her decision-making process. She also started college thinking she was there for professional career preparation, when her real purpose was the life experience.
Types of Colleges
The official Carnegie classification of colleges includes seven categories of colleges in its most basic categories. When including sub-categories, that number increases to over thirty. In my opinion, most of the differences matter mainly to people who work in higher education. I am not going to try to recreate a classification system, but I think it is important to review the broad categories of institutions as it relates to the student experience.Research Universities
These are the most famous type of institution often with a national reputation. Most states have at least one flagship university that is a research university. These are usually public universities, but they can be non-profit. The focus is on faculty research, and undergraduate courses are often taught by graduate students. Often, they have a hospital system attached to the university. More often they have significant athletic programs. These are very large organizations and very complex.Regional Public Universities
In most states, there is another tier of public universities that lack the prestige of the flagship school and other major research universities. Typically, they will have graduate programs, but more courses will be taught be faculty and usually without the large lecture halls. Many of these schools began as teacher colleges and over the last fifty plus years they have diversified to include much more than preparing teachers. (If you see the term “normal college,” this is the old term for a teacher’s college.) Most have residence halls, but they serve primarily students from the local region.Liberal Arts Colleges
These are usually but not always private, non-profit colleges. Many were started by religious movements. In the 19th century, every Protestant faith felt the need for their own colleges, especially as seminaries to prepare church leaders. Over the century since, many have lost their religious background while some are still very connected to their denomination. They tend to be residential with students living on campus with most courses small and taught by full-time faculty. Increasingly they are adding professional graduate programs, but this has not been their focus. They usually have athletic programs, but not ones with a high profile.Career Colleges
Career colleges have historically been for-profit schools but not always. For-profit colleges are businesses that provide educational services. They may be dedicated to a specific profession like cosmetology or they might have a broader set of programs in healthcare, business, and technical fields. These were some of the first colleges to offer online programs, though in the last several years many other, more traditional colleges have been adding online programs. Programs at career colleges tend to be focused on a specific career pathway. Career college campuses tend to be commuter campuses, but some do have residence halls.Community Colleges
Community colleges are public colleges based in a local area. They usually have two-year programs that prepare students to transfer to a four-year school along with two-year career programs. In some states, they have started to offer four-year degrees. Community colleges usually are commuter colleges, but some have residence halls.The different types of college do not mean much when it comes to quality, but they do provide some framework for understanding the differences in student experience between different institutions.
Prestige
A key aspect of a college degree is the prestige that goes with being a college graduate. That prestige reflects the reputation of the school where the degree is earned. Reputation is how the university is perceived by others.Reputation and prestige come from many sources. College rankings are one source. The rankings are not based on any measure of quality of outcomes from the school. Instead other measures are used to rank schools, many of them subjective. Peer reviews, how other colleges perceive a college, are part of their ranking process. Another factor is how many people apply to the school and how many are accepted. The faculty are also a factor. Faculty who are famous either in their field or beyond academia boost their institution. Research generated especially funded research is also a factor. Having programs that are well known in their fields also can help. Athletic programs (especially football and basketball) also build university brands. How pretty the campus is can contribute to reputation. Famous alumni also help. The alumni network can help people land jobs in some fields, and the size of the alumni network is important.
While it can be beneficial to graduate from a more prestigious university, prestige itself is not an indication of how good the college is. There are roughly 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States. Most people probably have heard of maybe 40 of those nationally. In regions and local areas, colleges may have a local reputation, which can be valuable when you are living and working in that area. Do not put too much weight on the prestige of the university.
Major and Choice of College
In the next chapter we discuss how to select a major. If you have a specific major in mind, then you will obviously need to find a school with this major. When I was a campus dean, one of my programs was aviation. Very few colleges have aviation programs, so this limits the options for students who want to go to college to become a pilot.Researching Options
The first step in researching options is to determine what type of institutions that you are looking for based on your purpose.If your priority is the college experience, then you want to focus on schools that have residence halls. Even if you will not live on campus, having students on campus is what creates opportunities for activities and clubs. You will next need to determine what you can afford and your own preferences. How important is it to be near home or far away from home? Farther away is usually more expensive because of additional travel expenses, but this can also be offset by lower costs for tuition and/or housing.
If you want to be within a certain distance from home whether that is 30 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours, or 8 hours, you have a geography to look at schools. You only need to search out the schools within that range. If location is not a factor or even if it is, you will want to consider whether you want urban, suburban, or rural/small town. This further reduces the list. If distance is not a concern, you may have preference for a certain region of the country.
If you need to be able to commute to campus, then your options will be limited to what is near you and online options, unless you do not want to do online. Since so many colleges offer online programs now, there are many options for online study.
Key Questions
Once you have limited your search to a limited set of schools, you need to do the research that will help you determine which are your best options.For each option you can identify, you should ask each of the following questions:
- What is the reputation? (Positive national, positive regional, neutral, negative)
- Does it have the major?
- Career Services for field? Placement rates?
- What are options if that major does not work out?
- Policies on transfer and alternative credit?
- Campus experience?
- Term length?
- Accreditation?
- Are classes online?
- What is the cost?
Reputation is not the sole factor, but it is worth considering how the college is perceived.
If you know what major you want to study, having that major is important. It is also useful to know if they provide career services for that major and what the placement rates are for graduates. Also, you should know what your options are if that major does not work out. Some programs only admit a few students, and if you do not get in, what are your other options?
Policies on transfer credit and alternative credit can change the total cost of your degree. It is best to shop different schools to see who gives you the best deal.
The campus experience is important, even if your primary purpose is career development. Do you feel comfortable on campus? Do you connect with other students?
The term length is important both for how long you will be in school and your experience. Many career schools use accelerated courses, so each class might be 4-weeks, 8-weeks long, or 10-weeks long versus the traditional semester of 15-weeks. Shorter classes can meet a quicker path to graduation, but that also means more intense studies with more study time each week.
Accreditation includes two areas. First, the school itself must be accredited either regionally or nationally for students to receive financial aid. Credits from regionally accredited schools tend to transfer more frequently than those from nationally accredited schools, but that is the primary difference from a student perspective. Second, some programs need program accreditation to allow students to receive licensure. This varies by program and state, but it is something to consider. You may have issues if you receive a degree in one state and want to practice in another state. One of my friends discovered that her degree in massage therapy from Michigan lacked the required number of hours to be licensed in Kentucky. This is something to consider, if it pertains to your major and career.
Online courses are important if you want to study online, but they can also be an advantage even if you are on campus. A good question to ask is what you will ever need to come to campus to do. Schools may offer online courses but still require exams on campus.
Cost we will consider in a later chapter, and cost can be different than the published cost. It is something you will want to have some idea on as you decide about where you want to go to school.
At this stage, you should have a list of schools that would meet your needs. Cost may remove some schools from the list. If you are applying to selective schools, you might not be able to get in everywhere. After all of that, trust your instincts about what option feels like it best meets your purpose in going to college in the first place.
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