How to decide your university
- mashatchesnokova
- Jan 17
- 4 min read
As you can tell, I love talking everything-university. If you are pre-uni age, perhaps you will find this helpful. Let me be like your older sister, or something.
I've been through the application process, came out on the other side, and I've also done a lot of research on universities, applications/applying, and read a lotttt of college essays to get an idea of what works/what they're looking for. Genuinely, I kind-of love this stuff. I get how it can be stressful, and it was for me too, but I also really enjoyed researching and getting to write my own essays (I think you would've guessed that part though).
Deciding the place for you
I'm not even going to include finances/tuition price because I just feel like that's so obvious but that's obviously a factor in all this
Introduction
As you can imagine, many factors go into finding/deciding the right place for you. If you make a google search, you'd probably find a list similar to the one I'm about to make. But I'm going to tell you some of the things I think are MOST important to consider when deciding, they were for me, and I think are/should be for everybody, however keep in mind the list of priorities could be different for you.
List
Ranking. Ended up being the most important thing to me. I would say ranking is probably of utmost important to you if you have an ambitious career path you are trying to take on, specifically requiring graduate school. In this scenario, your undergraduate school matters.
Also ranking really matters because it creates the atmosphere. How dedicated are these people?
Location. This was so important to me, that it almost overrode ranking (it didn't win the fight). This might not be that important to you, but you have got to think about it. You will spend 4 years of your life at this place, even if it will go by fast (which it probably will). I've had one semester and it went by so quick; I can't believe it's over. Personally, I wanted a place that wasn't my home state (didn't end up working out, I'm still here) but I also had a very specific state I wanted to be in, one that had both mountains, the ocean, was on the coast, and had cherry blossom trees. Can you guess the state? Anyway, that was important to me because I wanted to be in state I could actually see myself living in. But ultimately, the ranking was such a stark difference of the two schools I was deciding between. One in that state, and one in the one I ended up choosing. And I want to go to graduate - medical - school...so...I had to make the smart (yet difficult for me) choice.
What also goes into location is whether you want to be independent/close to your family or not (Personally I didn't want to be close, but it didn't end up working out).
Consider things like, whether you will be able to fly home (for what breaks?) and prices.
I will say, though, being close has its advantages.
Being able to do laundry and not pay for it (at least at my university I have to pay)
If you have homework questions maybe your parents will be able to help you (my parents are chemists, have P.h.Ds in chemistry, and one is also a professor)
If there's a family birthday, or big event.
You can randomly go home for the weekend if you feel like it. You can easily get away from your university (which is a really nice feeling and necessary sometimes, trust me).
School size.
Some people like a huge school, where you see new people every day, and some like an intimate school, where you build close relationships with your professors.
Keep in mind: that depending on your major, you can have both. If you have a relatively different major (like College of Engineering in general) not a lot of people are going to do that major, or stick it out to the end, when things get even harder. When the classes get more specific, you won't have crazy big lecture halls.
I always thought I wanted a small school, but I love that my school is among the densest. It is so nice knowing that I can have so many different friends, meet so many different people, and get fashion inspo just by walking to class which I have to do anyway.
You can also analyze people (psychology; people-watch) and it's fun!
Because I have an engineering major, my classes will get small anyway, and I'll have that close relationship with my professors.
There are other ways to get intimate with your school, like doing research that only you and a small amount of people are doing, like one professor.
A club can be a lot smaller as well! So do not worry if you get stuck at a large school but crave smaller groups. There are plenty of ways for both.
Sports.
Maybe you care about there being big sporting events, or that the school is big on sports.
This is very appropriately at the bottom of the list, but is the school a party school or not? I will say, I go to the #1 party school, and it doesn't affect me at all (if you don't let it). And it's not that hard either. Completely depends on you.
Other things to consider
1. Roommate or not. Completely depends on you. Most people do roommate, so then the question is finding one or doing random.
I did random, and I wanted to. I didn't want to go through the process of finding someone anyway.
I will say, sometimes this goes very wrong (I've heard horror stories; I got lucky).
Consider which dorm you are applying for as well, or what kind of community, if doing random.
I also recommend https://www.collegevine.com/. It's a great tool for seeing all colleges, filtering for what you want, making a list, keeping track. Colleges can also literally FIND you this way if you complete your profile. Another fun feature is that it can calculate your personal chances (based on completed profile) for getting into a particular university. It's great and a ton of fun. Very helpful; highly recommend. College Vine helped me a ton.
Also read, "I started University!!!" Leave comments.
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