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.
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.
Choosing a college to go to is definitely a very difficult and overwhelming process. I remember my time very well, and I remember have a tough time making my decision. There were just so many factors including athletics, location, and academics. Your son seems to have a good head on his shoulders. I wish I was that organized when I was trying to make my decision. It probably would have made it a lot easier for me. I did not have a Facebook account and definitely did not have a Twitter account when I was a junior in high school, so I never used it as a resource. That is great that it is beneficial to your son. I would like to wish him luck in his decision process.
ReplyDeleteI agree 100% that technology has enhanced and helped to ease the college selection process. When I began searching for universities that could provide me with 1) online education 2) a degree in communications 3) fully accredited with transferrable credits and 4) economically feasible I started on the internet.
ReplyDeleteI had narrowed down the selection and then I started talking to others who were attending the university and / or people who had worked at the institutions. A personal recommendation does go a lot further than comments from people I do not know. A personal recommendation is how I ended up at VCSU. A friend whose husband worked there couldn’t say enough nice things about the school, people and environment. She was right!
That is great that he is using technology to help him advance in the future! Yes, I think that the college search is a very big and important decision and you should collect as much information as you possibly can before making the big leap. I graduated 5 years ago and even then there wasn’t much communicating between myself and the colleges by technology. I got a lot of mail in the mailbox and remember having to fill out little post cards to send back just to request them to send me more information. Having a Facebook page you can follow would let you see how the social and educational life is lived on a particular campus. I think kids that are still in school should learn and use everything they can about technology because it is only going to keep getting more and more advanced and you want to stay on top of it all instead of getting buried underneath it all.
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