Building Your College List: A Research and Comparison Workbook

A strong college list is not a list of impressive-sounding names. It is a balanced set of safety, target, and reach schools that you have genuinely researched. This hands-on course walks you through building that list with templates designed to keep the work organized. By the end of this course you will have a tracked college list with at least ten entries balanced across safety, target, and reach, a comparison spreadsheet across your chosen dimensions, structured notes from at least three campus visits or virtual sessions, and a refined shortlist for applications. What you will learn: - How to translate your evaluation framework into a list of dimensions you will compare - How to source candidate schools using major-specific databases, alumni networks, and regional searches - How to evaluate admission selectivity using mid-50% test scores, GPA ranges, and yield data - How to plan and run a campus visit, including questions to ask students and faculty - How to evaluate a virtual session or open house as a partial substitute for a visit - How to keep a comparison spreadsheet that can be updated as you gather more information - How to refine the long list down to a final application list The course is structured as a workbook. Each module provides a template, shows a filled example, and walks you through your own version. This course is written for students approximately one to two years before applications. By the end you will have replaced anxious browsing with a tracked process, and your application list will reflect real comparisons rather than impressions gathered at random.