In both my personal and professional experience, book research, online research and mealtime conversations about college can continue for months and years without truly interesting the student in the “search”. The real fun begins when a parent and student visit a college that they find to be a “Match”. At that point there is no stopping them from excited and thorough quest to find eight or nine other “Match” colleges. Overnight they are transformed into skilled, independent researchers evlauating and comparing colleges based on their student’s individual criteria finding magazine rankings overly simplistic and/or largely uninformative. So get out there and find your first “Match”.

So where to start on the individual criteria? Briefly, the Five “P’s” are PERSON (Will this be a challenging/nurturing “home for you?), PROGRAM (Can you study and play at this college as you imagine?), PEOPLE (Are these the people you want to be part of your college community?), PLACE (Will this place enhance your college experience?), and PRICE (Is this college relatively expensive or inexpensive?). I work with my students to help them form criteria in each of these categories.

Ironically, the “elephant” P left ignored in the corner through all of this process is PRESTIGE. Prestige is the respect accorded a college by others. I sugget more important is the “respect” your high school student accords a particular college. Finding the right college requires that the student be at the center of the process, not a national magazine. Admittedly throughout the Five P’s students must rely on outside opinions and elements of prestige will creep in, but a student knowledgeable of the importance of a variety of factors will choose carefully– giving no outside, generalized, single rating central focus. The student’s evaluations must be the core of the selection process in order that a “match” for that student be found. So get out there and visit! Leave the magazines for the grocery store.