Choosing the Right Online School or Program For You
Eventually, you need to start thinking about college in specifics, about where you might want to go and why. The first thing you need to do is make a list of colleges that might be right for you. But you can’t make a good list until you know what you want to put on it, and you may be mulling over some of those list items for months ahead of time, and see which way your feelings make you lean.
Commute or Online Distance Education?
Deciding whether you want to leave home for any of your classes is one of the first decisions you need to make. Are you ready to make the transition into an unsupervised education or do you need a professor and class time to stay focused? Do you want to save the expense of commuting, maybe even room and board? Procrastination is an online student’s worst enemy. It usually ends in stressful, sleepless nights before exams and paper deadlines.
Your Major or Degree Program
Do you have an idea of what you want to study in college? It’s ok if you don’t; many students don’t decide how to focus their college years until after they arrive. And many schools, recognizing this widespread indecision, don’t require a choice of major until a student completes general education courses.
If you have strong feelings about a certain field, think about how strong those feelings are? Ask for brochures, request more information, and get everything and anything you can to help your decision making. Throughout this website, we offer students plenty of opportunities to request information from universities they are interested. Will you be ready, when the time comes, to narrow your search to colleges with your chosen major? If you’re not sure, stay flexible. Wait until you’re completely certain before nailing down your decision.
What’s your motivation for going to college?
Because your parents expect you to? Because you can make more money with a degree? Because you want to train yourself for a specific career? Or do you want to go to college because you don’t know as much as you think you should know?
What am I willing to pay?
The cost of college, of course, is a key factor in determining where you go. You won’t enroll in a college if you can’t pay its bills. But money is not something to think about when you compare colleges this early in the game, because you really don’t know how much each college will cost.
You have no idea – yet – how much your tuition will be reduced by financial aid.
In 2009, more than 90% of all college students in the United States were not paying their school’s full sticker price.
Aid recipients are not just the poor. Many colleges give away millions of their own dollars to help students pay bills, some aid flows to students who families earn six-figure incomes. The point is, wait until you have some real numbers for comparison. Your financial concern should be finding as much scholarship money as you can, and with our thorough list at Scholarships, we help you do just that.
Large or Small Campus?
Ashford University has almost 11,000 students. Colorado Technical University has 1,500 students. The only things that they have in come are that they offer an excellent education, and they’re online schools. Each is the right school for some students, but neither is right for all. Some students thrive in the big sea. They enjoy the wide variety of social, cultural, and other activities that come with a large university. They’re willing to sacrifice some individual attention (sometimes they’ll just be numbers in huge classes) in exchange for a large school’s opportunities and connections. Other students have the opposite reaction. They like the small college atmosphere, where everyone seems to know everyone else, and where professors know student’s personally.
Where do you want to live?
Do you want to attend a school where most students live on campus? Or do you care whether most of them commute from home each day? Then again, if you’re considering a school that has an online program, you’ve solved this issue already.
