Choosing a School - Part III

So let's just say you have already decided on your country of study or you feel that it is a non-issue. What next?

Well one way you can do it is to think about your choice of your course of study. You probably already have something in mind already. Science? History? Accounting? Law? etc.

I am not sure if I have mentioned it already but medicine and law cannot be taken at undergraduate level in the US, so people interested in these areas often look to the UK or Australia for an overseas option. NUS doesnt fare too badly in these areas either so that's something you might want to consider too.

Let's just say that Person A likes chemistry and he wants to study in either the US or UK. His 1st priority for university is to get a good education in his field of study. First thing he would want to do is to check out the rankings in usnews.

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad

I know it says graduate schools but the undergraduate version isnt free so we will just have to make do.

"The Sciences" is what I am interested in, followed by "top chemistry programs".
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad/che/search

And this is what he gets!
1. Caltech
1. MIT
1. Stanford
1. UC Berkeley
5. Harvard
6. Scripps Research Institute
7. UIUC
7. University of Wisconsin Madison
9. Cornell University
9. Northwestern
and so on.

At this juncture I think it's good to clarify something. Some people ask me how many schools they should apply to. My answer is that it's really up to you, but a good gauge is about 7 or 8 schools in total because each school you pay for costs money! (Okay to be more precise I think I should say you should only pay for the application fees of ~8 schools) In general, the schools that you apply to can be classified into 3 categories: Reach, match or safety.

Reach refers to schools which you feel you have a long shot, but you want to try anyway. These are typically schools with high rankings and are very selective. Match refers to schools that you feel you have a decent shot at, and Safety refers to schools which you are extremely confident of getting into (hence they are your 'safety' schools).

So what person A then did was to go down the rankings and start classifying. Of course, when you do that, you dont want to have 10 reach schools and only 1 match school because reach schools are, well, reaches. You dont want a situation where you dont get into your reach school and your match school rejects you for some reason and you end up having no school to go to.

Okay time to shortlist. Assuming you want to eventually pay for about 8 schools in total, it's a good idea to shortlist about 15 schools at first.

Back to Person A. Since he is from NUS High School and has a very decent cap of say, 4, we can say that NUS and NTU are his safeties. UCAS counts as 1 (since he is really only interested in Cambridge and the rest are just filled up for the heck of it). So we have:

Reach: Cambridge
Match:
Safety: NUS, NTU

Now let's look at the list of US schools and classify them accordingly.

1. Caltech - reach
1. MIT - reach
1. Stanford - reach
1. UC Berkeley - match
5. Harvard - reach
6. Scripps Research Institute - dont think you can apply there
7. UIUC - match
7. University of Wisconsin Madison - match
9. Cornell University - reach/match
9. Northwestern - reach/match

You can see many 'reaches' in the top 10 list, which shouldnt surprise you at all since good schools tend to be more selective. It will be good to eventually apply for about 3 reaches (excluding the UK), 3 matches and 2 safeties so shortlist accordingly for this 1st part, but again it's up to your own discretion. The money is yours!

The list now looks like this (minus Cambridge):

Reach: MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Harvard
Match: UC Berkeley, UIUC, University of Wisconsin Madison, Cornell, Northwestern
Safety: NUS, NTU

Another way to gauge reach/match is by the number of Singaporeans who go there. A good reference is the RJC website (http://www.rjc.edu.sg/USapps/Colleges/rjcrecord.asp) where they tell you the acceptance rate/school. Cornell may be ranked highly on the usnews list, but has a high acceptance rate for Singaporeans and hence I have classified it as "match".

Now to do some research on the schools. Person A likes a vibrant city life and hates to be buried in books the whole day.

The next thing to do is then to go to their various websites to experience its feel and see if you like the culture and the vibes you are getting. Talk to people (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com) to ask about the culture. Person A may decide to rule Stanford out of his list because it's a very self-sufficient place in Palo Alto and hardly a vibrant city life (unless he goes down to San Francisco). He may then decide to rule out Harvard, because he thinks its impossible for him to get in and he doesnt want to waste his money. There, then that leaves room for a few more schools to add to his list and research on! And then it goes on.

Going down the rankings:
11. Columbia University - reach
Perfect to add to list of reach schools. Columbia is in New York, just the kind of place he would like to be in.

Like I said, it all depends on your priorities in universities and the vibes you get from them. If you like to be on the East Coast then Stanford and the UC schools may not be for you. If being around internationals and staying away from Singaporeans is what you like then Cornell may not be good; it's swarming with Singaporeans. Talk to seniors who have studied there for more advice on specific schools. Special programmes in some schools may also be the deciding factor when you choose your schools.

It's hard to advise on how to choose schools as each individual is different, but I hope this has been of help. Do im me if you would like advice that is specific to your needs. :)

>> Choosing a School - Part IV