When I was in high school , yes I know that was more years ago than most of you in this class, I remember my college search very well. I remember most of the people in my class thought I was crazy because I was collecting information from colleges all across the country and I wanted as many opportunities as possible. This was an important decision for me and I wanted as many possible choices as I could find.

Now, I have a son who is a junior in high school and he is facing this same decision. He is lucky enough however that the colleges have been coming to him. During his sophomore year, he took the ACT Plan test. At the beginning of this test, he gave them his name, address, phone number, and email address. I am sure he had no idea how much mail and email would end up coming his way. He is a smart kid and did very well on the test.

Around the end of January, he just happened to check his email and he had nearly 50 emails from colleges all over the country. Big schools, small schools, some very prestigious universities and a few I will admit even I had never heard of. As all of his information has started flowing in, he has been overwhelmed at times at the amount of paperwork that is coming his way. He had to use a way to keep track of everything and start narrowing down his list.

To my surprise, he created an excel spreadsheet to track all of the schools he had received information from already. He has a second tab of the sheet in which he is tracking his top choices and what they offer for majors that he is interested in studying. Even more amazing, is that he has started following these schools on Facebook and Twitter. That has really helped for him to keep up to date with the athletic teams that he hopes to play for in the near future.

Technology has taken a tough slow process and made it easier and faster. When I requested information, I had to look up the address in a guide book, send it snail mail, and wait for something to finally come back. Thanks to the internet and today’s technology, a college or university can send out more information to more people than they ever dreamed of in my day.