Picking The Right College

IvySelect Will Help You Find Your Best Fit College

Regardless of where you’re positioned across the academic spectrum, picking the best college for you is pivotal to your happiness and success at the undergraduate level. The college match process is just as important for high-achieving students as any other student. Understand that the Ivy League is far from monolithic. Each college has a unique culture, philosophy and strengths. For example, Brown has an open curriculum that many students love due to its flexibility. Yet generations of Columbia students are drawn together by their famous core curriculum, which provides a solid foundation in the liberal arts and sciences. Penn has a dynamic urban setting and a “work hard, play hard” ethos. However, some students prefer the idyllic rural setting of Dartmouth.

There’s a more fundamental question to consider. Is an Ivy League school the best fit for you? As we help you build your college list, we’ll ramp up your understanding of the variety of colleges that may be better matches based on class size, curriculum, geography and climate, faculty accessibility and mentorship, research opportunities, the nature of the student body as well as many other factors.

We Will Help You Consider Your Options

Ultimately, you may like the environment at a small liberal arts college, due to its intimate size and the ease of interactions with your professors. Schools with specialized programs, such as a music conservatory or engineering may be solid fits.

There are niche programs and opportunities in different research universities as well. You may be drawn to a school that allows you to create your own major, or which has a highly specific or unique interdisciplinary program. Some universities may allow you to accelerate your studies, so that you can combine a bachelor’s degree with a graduate program, thereby saving you time and money.

Consider, also, that for a student uncertain of their major or career path, that a university that provides you with the flexibility of delaying the declaration of your major until the end of your sophomore year may be a better match than a university that forces you to apply to a specific college in the school or to a specific major that may have limited enrollment.

Your IvySelect college counselor will also discuss with you other factors to consider when you build your college list, such as scholarship opportunities, the availability of first-rate athletic facilities, internships and coops, whether specific clubs and activities are available, as well as opportunities for volunteerism.

It’s foolish to pick a college based on artificial rankings. Your choice of school is not a trophy to be won. Instead, your decision should be based on how well a college matches with your needs. Of course, if an Ivy League university or a number of the Ivies are great fits, we’ll gladly recommend them for your college list.

IvySelect Will Assist You In Developing An Outstanding College List

Your Ivy league consultant will work with you, teaching you how to research schools of interest. We’ll make you aware of subjective guides that have informative essays about individual colleges, online resources that will ramp up your knowledge, career and major-related databases, comparative guides as well as many other resources.

We’ll serve as your sounding board as you consider schools. We’ll help you refine your college list, so that it has an appropriate number of reaches, targets, “likelies” and “most likelies.”

Given the exceedingly low admit rates at the very top schools, we create an “unbalanced” list with our students, favoring reach schools from a numerical perspective. We’ll work with you, within reason, on a larger list of schools than average so that you have the best chance of admission at a number of colleges at the top of your academic reach.

IvySelect will help you in defining your options, discovering your best fit, and demystifying the process of selecting colleges. Picking the right college doesn’t have to be painful. We’ll reduce your stress and build your confidence that you have chosen schools that are great matches. Working with your IvySelect College Counselor, we’ll put together a college list that you’ll love!