So many colleges - how do you pick ones to consider?

[Indiana]

Thanks guys! My DD is a rising sophomore so first we're trying to see if she would be interested to going to school in the Northeast. It would be a big step, geographically speaking, from Colorado. BK - I love the spreadsheet idea; it sounds like your DD is well on her way. I look forward to hearing about where she chooses to study. Thanks so much everyone for all of your advice and support; I remember reading everyone's college recruiting adventures a year or so ago and I can't believe here I am, ready to embark upon the madness!

 

[Justanotherdad]

The first thing to do is consider academic interests. Then decide what schools have those academic interests. Then decide which of those schools would your daughter love to attend. This is SO important. Your daughter has to love the school and want to go there even if (or especially if) she wasnt playing softball. Then check and see if whats left on that list that has softball available. Those left standing are your target schools. Those are the best fit. Those are the ones you focus all your attention on. For my daughter we ended up with about 25 schools that had her acadmic interests and were close enough to home and some other criteria that was important to her. Once you figure all that out, the fun starts (and the loss of sleep). Now you have to start scheduling camps and clinics with the schools on her lists. Email regularly. Call all coaches once a week, leaving messages if you don't reach them telling them when you'll call back.

My daughter started this last fall, right at the start of her sophmore year of High School. We went to 8 college camps in the winter. We also put all those schools in a speadsheet along with the 6 criteria important to her and ranked each one based off that. So now after visits and such, we can move all the schools who give her offers up to the top and then make decisions based on her criteria list and the intangibles that she would only get from visiting campus. We track every activity such as camps, emails, phone calls, visits, who's showing up at her games if we knew they were there, etc. for each school in the spreadsheet. By January, she had her first offer after hitting 2 home runs in a game at Rising Stars in Florida while a coach she had contacted was there to watch her.



As of now, she has no less than 5 offers to play ball at schools she identified early as targets and has been emailing and calling all year.

 

[jinjet95]

My DD coach is an administrator for a school district and sent the team this link:

https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/find-colleges?affiliateId=rdr&bannerId=csearch

It helps narrow down the search by answering a series of questions. You might find it helpful as a place to start. There were a ton of colleges that fit my DD criteria that I had never heard of.

 

[Indiana]

Update: we just got back from our New England tour. We only saw a handful schools, since we were mixing in family parties, beach trips, etc. It was crazy hot - we arrived during a massive heat wave. On the upside, the ocean was super warm; we could actually swim, something I never remembered being able to do as a kid in MA. I was SO glad we toured a handful of schools; it really gave my daughter a much better idea of which types of schools she wants to focus on.

We did visit Yale - I went into it with a bad attitude, being a Cornell alum, but came away begrudgingly admitting that Yale is amazing. I especially like how they group freshmen housing; they make an effort to put five kids together in each suite who are very very different. I liked this aspect a lot, and it was different from some other schools which seemed to put athletes together. Either way could be a fit depending on the student, but we liked the diversity method. We visited some smaller schools near Hartford and New Haven and my daughter loved those. We visited three Boston schools, one my DD fell in love, the other she hated the second she stepped onto campus, the third she was neutral - so it really is a matter of feel. We didn't have time to go out to Amherst and the surrounding colleges in western MA, but we'll hit those up next time.

Flying to Boston from Denver is not super fun since the weather is so unpredictable, especially in the summer. Our flight home was delayed three hours because it rained cats and dogs yesterday and Logan airport was completely shut down for a bit. All in all, though, three hours isn't much to complain about! One little thing I noticed - if you are doing a campus tour, you don't need to do the information session unless you have some specific questions about admissions. The tour covers a lot of the same information. Some schools ask you to check in at tour time, some don't. Others have computer kiosks where you can check in and let them know that you were physically on campus. None of the tours spoke specifically about athletics, we visited the facilities on our own afterwards. We did visit Harvard, since we were in the area. The fields are across the Charles River from the main campus, so a bit of a schlep, but they are GORGEOUS. Everyone over at the athletic side was extremely friendly. We dragged my niece and nephew along, both young hockey players and they got a private tour of the rink, which they got a big kick out of.

Thanks again for everyone's advice, we'll definitely check out jinjet95's link!

 

[MsDinosaur]

My DD coach is an administrator for a school district and sent the team this link:

https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/find-colleges?affiliateId=rdr&bannerId=csearch

It helps narrow down the search by answering a series of questions. You might find it helpful as a place to start. There were a ton of colleges that fit my DD criteria that I had never heard of.

I like that site. However, I did have an issue. I put in softball as a must, but got back at least three schools that definitely do not have softball as a varsity sport: Duke, Johns Hopkins and Southern Cal. So it's not terribly reliable for girls trying to weed out non-softball schools.

It's going to be a pain to take the schools it gives, go out to each one's website, jump to its athletic website and verify whether it has a softball program. Argh.

 

[Greenmonsters]

I like that site. However, I did have an issue. I put in softball as a must, but got back at least three schools that definitely do not have softball as a varsity sport: Duke, Johns Hopkins and Southern Cal. So it's not terribly reliable for girls trying to weed out non-softball schools.

It's going to be a pain to take the schools it gives, go out to each one's website, jump to its athletic website and verify whether it has a softball program. Argh.

I don't know how good or detailed the linked search program is, but if I found a school that seemed to perfectly meet my kids' most important criteria, I would be at least a little hesitant to dismiss it outright for simply lacking softball. I know that's blasphemous, but...there is more to college and life than softball

 

[MsDinosaur]

I don't know how good or detailed the linked search program is, but if I found a school that seemed to perfectly meet my kids' most important criteria, I would be at least a little hesitant to dismiss it outright for simply lacking softball. I know that's blasphemous, but...there is more to college and life than softball

LOL, this is ...shhh true. However, the site has sliders for each criterion, where you can choose whether you 1) don't care, 2) would like or 3) must have. I feel that if one is searching with a 'must have' in a category, it's only right for the search to respect that.

 

[Greenmonsters]

There may be some schools that may not have NCAA SB now, but have plans to add it (or have a very competitive club team) so its always worth checking with athletic department before you rule out an otherwise apparent good fit. And it might give a good SB player an advantage in the admissions arena.

FWIW, for those with an engineering interest, a taste for way upstate NY, and a love of hockey, 2013-14 will be Clarkson University's first year as a NCAA DIII SB program. Don't know how many others like this there might be, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

 

[dbias]

Don't forget to factor in the instate vs out of state tuition consideration. My dd is nursing all the way. After looking at several schools with reciprocated interest she put pen to paper and said if I go to school A , instate (WV), with WV's Promise Scholarship Program and minimal SB money I can graduate practically debt free. If I go to schools B,C, or D out of state with out of state tuition rates wow! (How much do you want to pay to play SB?
So with that line of thinking maybe she should consider accounting. Lol

 

[MsDinosaur]

Don't forget to factor in the instate vs out of state tuition consideration. My dd is nursing all the way. After looking at several schools with reciprocated interest she put pen to paper and said if I go to school A , instate (WV), with WV's Promise Scholarship Program and minimal SB money I can graduate practically debt free. If I go to schools B,C, or D out of state with out of state tuition rates wow! (How much do you want to pay to play SB?
So with that line of thinking maybe she should consider accounting. Lol

And if she had to give up softball for any reason, she wouldn't find herself in a financial hole. Your DD sounds very wise!