A friend’s son is choosing between three colleges. They’re all of the same general type, but the differences still matter. It’s not about distance or money or sports or the size of the school. It’s really about the schools themselves. So - how do you figure out what’s best?
I asked a few friends who know the schools in question, and ended up talking to them about college choices in general. One of them said, “You’re picking out a dog at the pound - you take the one home that you connect with.” I think that’s right - it’s largely a gut decision. Even so, you want the right inputs. So based on those conversations, here are some things to consider when choosing a college.
Learning community. Is there a community of people who want to read and learn the stuff that you want to read and learn?
This could resolve the whole thing, since it speaks to both learning and community. If you’ve got those things, maybe you have what you need.
Dominant culture. Is there a dominant culture? How homogenous is it? Do you fit? Does it matter?
We are inclined to think a dominant culture is limiting – but not necessarily. For example, West Point has a very specific culture because it is a place that forms people in addition to educating them. In a sense, every institution does that, and culture is how that happens.
Subcultures. Are there subcultures? Can you access them? How easily? Dominant culture may not matter if a subculture aligns.
Subcultures can be thick - Greek life, sports teams, campus ministries, music groups - or even a specific academic major can define a college experience. For some people, college is an amazing experience of academic study and ROTC that happened to take place at one university or another. The subculture was what mattered.
Faculty culture. What’s the faculty culture - e.g., how do they interact with students? How much are they on campus? How accessible are they when they’re there? What research and publishing do they do, and does it influence the school?
This varies a great deal between colleges and even departments, but it’s often ignored by prospective students, who commonly spend more time investigating the cafeteria. (For the record, I take cafeteria matters very seriously, and I believe the quality of soft-serve ice cream should come up in accreditation reviews. But man cannot live on soft-serve alone, someone keeps saying, so – we think about the faculty thing too.)
Intellectual culture. Smart and intellectual aren’t the same thing. Does the culture (or subculture, or department) value curiosity or inquiry in a way that fits you?
The world is full of brilliant people who are not intellectuals. If an engineer invents a better airbag but has no desire to bore his friends to tears with the details of how it works, they’re probably fine with that. But if his friends are the kind of folks who want to hear about it, it’s great if he wants to share. Again this is a matter of fit – and even at top schools, the intellectual culture varies a lot.
Surroundings. Where do you thrive – and why? Some schools are cloisters; some are classrooms sprinkled around a central city.
Many students want big cities and big schools these days. How do the surroundings fit with what you want to learn and who you want to be in four years? I was easily distracted, so I loved being on a hillside in rural Minnesota. Chicago and Oxford were great too, but I was pretty distracted by those surroundings.
Fields of study. Is there a concentration or wide spread of study between sciences, humanities, professional, engineering? Is it more or less concentrated in your area? Which way does that cut?
A humanities student (languages, history, the arts, etc.) might naturally choose a humanities-heavy school. There are obvious reasons to do this. But consider how the presence of engineering and STEM yields a different campus culture, creates different opportunities, and might make the humanities better. Needless to say, it cuts the other way, too. So you may only be interested in one field of study, but the total mix available at the school will change who your peers are and that will influence your experience.
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