Reply to I need help with how to research

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "I need help with how to research"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Every kid is different and so how you research will be different too.  Here is how we searched for my child who was in a STEM magnet program in MCPS.

1) Starting point -  knowing what my kid wanted. Listed in order of importance. 
- My kid was interested in CS, Comp Engineering, Math, Economics.
- He did not want to be in a rural setting which was far from hospitals and airports (specific anxieties of my kids after USA failed so spectacularly during COVID.).  
- He wanted to be driving distance of maximum of 10 hours from home.  (again - specific anxiety and lack of confidence in USA), if possible. 
- He did not want to go to Southern and Red states, if he could help it. 
- He did not care for Greek life, but he wanted to have a good ratio of females and males. Plus, he wanted diversity
- Wanted to be in East Coast
- He was also interested in taking some interesting Humanities classes
- Did not care about Ivies, or prestige schools (except MIT).

2) Listed down the top x  schools by majors - using internet ranking. Found that many of the colleges were coming up again and again. CS, CE, Math were the same schools. Instate flagship was in the lists

3) Made an extensive list of what schools people from his program applied to by using Naviance. Instate flagship was listed

4) Cull down the lists in 2)  and 3) by using the top 4 criteria of what the boy wanted in 1)

5) Add in some easy target schools for RA. JIC.  Instate flagship was in EA round.

6) Chance yourself by using Collegevine for all the schools in the culled lists.

7) Read up on Fiske (which is an underwhelming book and did not really tell me anything).

8) Did deep dives on the colleges using their website, reading up on the research work being done by professors, watching their promo on youtube, sitting through their informational remote meetings.

9) Picked 5 colleges for EA.  Got into 2. One was instate flagship.

10) Applied to 3 more for RA. Got into 2. Good to have options but we did not end up considering or using them. The cream of the crop was in EA round.

11) Visited both schools that he got into in EA.  Liked both.

12) Chose the instate which was T15 for his major, instead of OOS which was T6 - because instate was giving same academic opportunities and internships as T6.  The prestige was also similar, alumni network was similar.  In the major, skill mattered more.  Prestige helps in getting internships and first job.  DS managed to get good internships for each years though he had to hustle a bit.

Other than that, instate was free, gave him $$ and recognition, close to home, had a better ratio of males and females, and  he was already heavily networked with peers he knew in DMV, had done previous internships in HS, so it was easy for him to hit the ground running. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics