70% of students change their major after they enroll in college.
Last week we talked about using the rest of the summer as a launching point for the activities that will eventually get a high school senior into a college—the first among those being narrowing down what is probably a fairly big list of possibilities into a manageable one from which tours can be scheduled and essays can be planned. But how do you narrow down that list? Here are some things for you and your child to think about.
Retention and graduation rates
The first thing to look at in that giant book of colleges is retention and graduation rates. Retention is what percentage of students stay in school after one year. Graduation is obviously what percentage of students end up graduating. Both tell you how happy students are with the school. A low retention rate means other students didn’t even want to stay around longer than a year, or there wasn’t enough support to keep them around. If students aren’t graduating, they didn’t want to stay around for 4-5 years.
There are lots of reasons why this could be the case, but the bottom line is an increased risk that your child won’t be happy there either.
A wide variety of majors and programs
70% of students change their major after they enroll in college. It’s natural to have a different idea about what you want out of life at the age of 18 compared to 20 or 21. But when that itch starts happening, your child wants a college that offers enough options for them to land somewhere comfortably without having to switch schools. For example, a small liberal arts school might have a great English program, but computer programming might not even be offered.
Life outside of class
The truth? Most colleges, especially your large universities, are pretty similar academically. What isn’t the same is how big the town or city is in which they are located, how expensive it is to live in these places, how far away from home they are, and other factors that can affect day-to-day life. A helpful mindset is to consider whether you would live in the place if the school wasn’t there.
Price
Because many colleges are similar in academics, it’s possible to comparison shop by price. Yes, this is the biggest investment you can make in your child’s future, but you also need to be realistic. It can be very hard to start that future if you have to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.
Remember, you’re not committing to any one school now. This process is just to separate the possibilities from the pretenders to streamline senior year.