(upbeat music)
- Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Steven Mercer,
and I'm a private college counselor
helping students and families think about
applying to great colleges for them,
and I'm also an instructor
in the online College Counseling Certificate program
at the University of California San Diego Extension.
And today I want to talk to you
about four important questions to ask
when you're thinking about where to apply to college.
Now there's lots of questions that you might want to ask,
but I consider these to be the four most fundamental.
And in many ways they're very simple,
but sometimes the answer is more complicated.
So the first question to ask is,
do you want a big school or a small school?
The reason I think this is the first important question
is because this can't change
once you get to a particular college.
If you know that you really wanted a big school experience
and you wind up enrolling in a small school,
that really can't change once you get there.
A small school can't become big,
and vice versa, a big school can't become small.
Now, the question is, how do you know a school is big,
or how do you know a college is small?
Well, it's really a matter of the student population.
Now, how it also feels to the student
will differ a little bit, so the exact numbers
aren't always the most important thing to ask.
But in general, a college or university
that has up to about 3,000 students
is something that I consider to be a small school.
And a college that has around 10,000 or more students
is unquestionably, in my opinion, a large school.
And of course there's some middle ground, too,
there's the medium-sized school
which could be somewhere between 3,000 and 10.
Now, a nice compromise sometimes for some students
is to say, I want a medium-size school.
But the essential question is
what is the educational experience
that you're looking for in and out of the classroom?
Now, answering this question is something
that I think takes time.
And I encourage students not to rush to a decision
just because of preconceptions
of what their high school experience has been like,
or they imagine what they want from college,
or they know someone that went to a small or big school.
And I really encourage students
to think about this a little bit.
One of the things that I've encouraged students to do
is avoid the prejudgment
that because they go to a small or large high school
they know what a small or large college
might be feeling like.
I've had many students say,
"I go to a large high school and I like it, it's exciting
"and I couldn't possibly go to a small college
"'cause it'd be the opposite, it'd be boring and quiet."
And that's an example that I'd encourage a student
to think about a little bit more carefully,
because in my opinion, there's not a clear correlation
between the size of a high school experience
to the size of a college experience.
That is, a high school with 2,000 students
might feel large to some students,
but a college of 2,000 students isn't a large college.
So this is something to think about.
There's no right or wrong answers.
And one of the best ways to get the answer to this question
is to visit the college.
Now, during pandemics, it's hard to do these visitings
because of travel restrictions
and tours on college campuses have been shut down
or changed pretty dramatically and limited.
And also, when people visit colleges I find
that they might do it when students are not there,
because they might visit during summer break
or during regular breaks during the school year
when students and families are available
to take off time to see those colleges.
And they might find that they visit a college,
big or small, when the college is closed
and students are gone home for a Thanksgiving holiday
or a spring break.
So be careful about what you see when you are on campus.
And if it looks quiet,
that does not mean it's a small, quiet, boring school,
'cause that could be a quite a large campus.
So, certainly don't hesitate to ask
what's the student population,
and that will give you a really good idea of what it's like.
The second question to ask is,
are you looking for a liberal arts education,
or do you want a college or university
that has a pre-professional emphasis?
Now, this question seems, to some students I ask,
they kind of scratch their head and look at me,
and they say, "I'm not really sure I know
"what you're talking about."
Some students will say to me,
"Well, I don't really want to study art,
"so I probably don't want to liberal arts education,
"I want the other one."
Well, let's talk about what this really means.
What this really means is it has a lot to do with the majors
that are available on a particular college campus.
So, most college campuses offer a very wide range of majors
in the liberal arts.
The liberal arts are a collection of subjects
that are the most, kind of in some ways,
ancient and traditional topics.
And it's what most people major in
when they go wind up going to college.
It's all subjects in sciences, arts, humanities,
social sciences, things like biology, chemistry, physics,
social sciences like sociology, psychology, history,
geography, all the humanities like philosophy
and literature of different periods in time and cultures,
and arts as well like theater, and fine arts,
and dance, et cetera.
However, some colleges offer more than that.
They offer what's called a pre-professional
collection of majors, and in some ways they're very similar
to what a liberal arts major looks like.
Let me give you an example.
Most liberal arts campuses offer a major in economics,
and for students that are thinking about
going into the world of business
and want to understand their career path in that direction,
and are intrigued by all of those subjects,
they might do very well studying economics
at a liberal arts college.
However, some colleges and universities
offer a major in business, and those are very, very similar.
In fact, all business majors are going to be required
to study some subjects within economics,
economic theory and basic economic ideas.
The difference is a business major curriculum
is more directed to a specific career path.
And that's similar between lots of pre-professional majors,
and in many ways their liberal art component
or partner majors.
So for example, physics is a great liberal arts major
that many students consider.
Engineering is the pre-professional emphasis
that might flow out of physics,
where physics is a required subject
for all engineering majors.
Majors within communications and journalism
might very well rely quite a bit on writing
and analysis of texts that you'd study
in lots of different liberal arts majors,
but again, it's directed towards more specific career paths.
The same goes with conservatory-style arts,
as opposed to some of the other types of arts majors
that might be considered a liberal arts major.
More conservatory-style arts are those
that require auditions, they're more intense,
and they focus your college education almost exclusively
on coursework related to that particular art form.
Whereas a liberal arts art major
would give you a wide variety of things to study,
room to double major or minor,
and just take lots of electives.
And another good example is architecture.
That's a pre-professional emphasis
that is not available at all schools.
The reason this is important is
that the quality of the collection of majors,
the types of majors that the school offers,
says a lot about the educational experience
that you might be getting.
And for those students that are thinking very seriously
about a certain pre-professional direction
in their career path,
and they've really thought about it a lot
in high school already, may find themselves disappointed
if they go to strictly a college
that offers only liberal arts majors.
Now, that's not to say that those are bad majors.
Those are great ways to get a college education
that offer tremendous benefits.
So this is just a personal choice and something
that all students should be thinking about.
So the third question is,
is the college focused on students?
And this is another question where students I ask this of
sometimes scratch their head and look at me and say,
"Well, of course, aren't all colleges focused on students?"
And the real question I'm trying to ask is,
to the student and to the family,
how important is a deep focus on individual students
to you in your education?
So let's back up and talk about
why that differs at various colleges.
In general, universities and colleges in the United States
are based on a foundation of three pillars.
They provide education, that might seem obvious;
they conduct research; and they serve.
And that looks like a lot of different things
to different universities, large and small.
But those are the pillars that they stand on.
The degree to which they divide up their energy,
the resources, the emphasis between these three pillars
varies depending on the university.
Often it's between a large university
and a small university,
or a university that has a strong pre-professional emphasis
versus just a liberal arts university.
So, I think it's fair to say
that smaller liberal arts-style universities,
they put more emphasis
on individual undergraduate education;
whereas a large research university puts a lot more emphasis
on the research activity that faculty conduct.
Now, both are really excellent ways
to get a great college education.
Some students will benefit more from a place
that pays more attention to them in the classroom.
Classrooms are smaller,
there's more opportunity to get to know your faculty,
to ask questions,
to have classrooms that are discussion-based
as opposed to large lecture halls,
and that might suggest you look
at a small liberal arts college.
But some students really benefit from large universities
where the faculty that they're learning from
are the foremost experts in their field,
and are conducting cutting-edge research
contributing to the advancement of that field.
And there's real documented evidence
that being educated in that environment
can provide for a remarkable education.
So this is really a choice,
but it's an important one to think about.
And the final question is in some ways also simple,
but it's probably the most complicated,
and the question is, can you afford it?
Now, that's a different question from, is college worth it,
is it worth the cost of attendance?
That's a longer conversation,
and stay tuned for a future episode
where I'm gonna discuss that.
But trying to determine if you can afford
that particular college price tag
requires some research.
It requires, sometimes, some asking of questions.
It requires filling out financial aid forms.
And yet, it is something that has to be considered,
because college costs vary.
And I do think that there sometimes is a frustration
that students and families have,
where they feel as though they want to go
to a particular university, but the price tag
is really out of their range.
And that's okay to look deeply at the cost of college,
and to take into account your budget
and your family's capacity and ability to pay for college.
Because there's so many different choices,
there's not just one way to get a great college education.
So, I hope you've enjoyed this brief overview
of what I consider to be the four most important questions
to ask when thinking about where to apply to college.
Thanks, bye now.
(upbeat music)