A good college search begins with the student! Self-assessment and reflection about your academic, social and financial needs is our recommended first step. Then, go out and test the waters with a few very different college visits to determine how your needs will be met by the variety of options available to you.

In our tips section we provide tips for resources and approaches to help you figure out your “why?” Step one of our roadmap is to consider a personality assessment or a college values assessment like the one you can find on schoolbuff.com . Try to find someone to talk with as you look at your results.

Step two is to take a local college tour (and listen to our previous episode on campus visits).  Step three is to talk to your network. Be curious about the college and career paths of the people in your life, including your high school teachers! Step four is to have an honest conversation about college affordability for your family and look at the net price calculator on a few college web pages.

Then, tune in for our next episode where we will walk you through how to pull this all together in a balanced list of colleges! 

Time Stamps:

00:37 What Are We Learning This Week?  Whitney walks us through the hands-on-learning aspects of an animal behavior major and we discuss how to find relevancy in more obscure majors!

05:39  Big Picture: We talk about the important first steps of building a college list, and these include assessing your education, social and financial needs, as well as your interests and your own college “why?”.

21:18 “Stump the IEC (Independent Educational Consultant)”  Whitney quizzes Katelyn on the origin countries of the 40 US college students competing as members of women’s hockey Olympic teams.

 24:39  Tips and Strategies for tools to help you assess your college fit needs. In our next episode, Part 2 of this series, we will talk about bringing this all together to choose colleges and build a balanced list.

More Than A Transcript © is a production of Whitney Bruce College Consulting and College Options, LLC. It is supported by Susan Lanigan and Katie Bruce, with artwork by Heidi Rehbock and original music by Will Morrow.

Visit our website at www.morethanatranscript.com for resources or to ask questions.

Thanks for listening!