Optimize your college search
June 4th, 2009 - by
Navigating through close to 1600 schools that offer women’s volleyball can be quite a daunting task. When I was going through the recruiting process I remember hearing from a lot of schools that I had never heard of before. At that time, I didn’t know where to start. I tried a few outlets available to me, namely my parents and my coaches. They certainly tried to help me, but unfortunately they did not know much about the schools either. In order to realistically consider a college you should really know all the basics: location, size, environment, campus type, entrance difficulty, admissions requirements, majors offered, and financial aid policy.
When you have a lot of coach contacts coming in (as many NCSA athletes do), you need a quick and easy way to familiarize yourself with a college/university. I know that high school student-athletes do not have a whole lot of extra time with your academic requirements and year round volleyball.
The initial response is to go to the school’s website for more information. While this may seem like the best place to start, there are a few reasons why it may not be the most effective way to learn about a college. First, you are looking at a biased site. A college/university is going to display facts about itself that portray it in a positive light. They will show you pretty pictures and their best stats. This may not be an accurate portrayal of the college/university. Second, college websites have become very intricate. Navigating through each page can take a long time. Usually the information you are looking for is buried three pages deep. Then you need to navigate around again to find the next piece of information you are looking for. All this just to find basic facts about the school! Third, you can only research one school at a time. You may have been contacted by 15 colleges in one day, how long is that going to take?
So, what is a better you ask? Well, there are a few resources that may be more efficient and effective for you during your college search. I regularly use a site called Petersons. They offer a “quick college search” feature that allows you to enter a college name and immediately get basic information about the college fast. The best thing is that this information is recorded from a third party, with no frills to distract you from the real facts. For example, I looked up Lake Forest College and learned immediately that the school has 1381 students, costs $32,130, is “very difficult” to gain entrance to, and the average ACT scores of incoming freshman range between 23-28. After one simple click I can also find the average incoming freshman GPA (3.51), the % of students living on campus,a list of majors, the financial aid policy and funding breakdown and much more. It’s simple and takes less than a minute per college.
In addition to this simple search function, this site also allows you to do an advanced college search by adding filters. There are several other sites that have a similar feature such as Collegeboard, Princeton Review, Usnews.com, College Navigator, and AnyCollege. I personally prefer Petersons because they allow you to search by sport and multiple divisions as well, which as an athlete is important when targeting schools.
Another powerful tool is the NCSA Power Rankings that are posted annually. The Power Rankings combine the Sears Cup Rank, US News Rank, and student-athlete graduation rank. So if you are looking for a quick reference as to whether the school has a good academic and athletic reputation, this is the place to go.
So in the future, focus on effective and efficient search habits. Happy recruiting!
