Developmental Snapshot: Looking for Higher Education

Pilgrim village at the  Plimoth Plantation, Massachussetts

Ignoring the bewildering price tag for attending US colleges (compared to attending colleges in other countries with comparable economic standing) the plethora of options for higher education in the USA is difficult to conceptualize for a foreign born citizen like myself, even one already familiar with universities/colleges by virtue of working with adolescents and teaching at the post BS/BA/PhD or MD graduate level.

So what is the best college or university?
In our internet era, you can immediately find out the highly variable answers to this often asked question. The answers' deconstructed details are readily available (provided you register and expose yourself to an avalanche of emails and letters) from such sites as the princeton review (rankings mostly based on selectivity, teachers' productivity, relative retention/graduation rates), college prowler (rankings seemingly based on student hotness, food quality, dorm comfort, substance use, athletic standing of the school, students' votes on a variety of variables), US News and World Report (the ranking pioneer), Forbes etc.....

If the variables taken into account to produce rankings do not satisfy your student, you can easily look up myriad of un-peer reviewed rankings for almost any variable you or your prospective student deem important (e.g., best colleges for skiiers, best colleges for aspiring writers, most beautiful colleges, best colleges for independant thinkers....)  You get the idea: if you are crazy about ice cream, you might not easily find "best ice cream colleges" but you can still find an approximation answer.

So what do I take from the experience of parent of aspiring higher ed student thus far?

Here is what I think I know:

1-The pre-financial aid price tag of college per child approximates a house;

2- Colleges are competing fiercely for the millions of students from the US and abroad and spend a lot of money on recruitment and advertising;

3-You can go to a school with most extraordinary and productive faculty and never be influenced by them, especially if they are under pressure to be extrordinary and productive;

4-College prowler, forbes, the princeton review etc...do not list most of the variables that are truly important to/for my kid;

5-Each adolescent is profoundly different, usually not terribly insightful about her or his emotional and cognitive makeup at 16 and a half to 17 when looking for colleges, and yet the likelihood of a good match with a college probably depends on being able to read one's most important needs and to identify environments that are capable of meeting them.

6-Even if as a parent you feel that you can read your kids and his or her needs as a book, you are at the parental stage where you can't just spoon feed your adolescents what you know about them (a-many of them would hate it if you did and b-they need to start doing some of the heavy lifting in the discovery process at that age).

In any case, the college search process is starting to feel like a pilgrimage: a voyage, not for a religious motive, but partly for a spiritual motive (or necessity) of discovery.

Till Later,

Anne