10 Things to Find Out Before Committing to a College

Lynn Jacobs and Jeremy Hyman

US News and World Report, 25 Mar 2009

Often we find that students, and their parents, tend to focus on bells and whistles when making their college selections. They fixate on things like the looks of the campus, the size of the library, the honors and study-abroad programs, even the quality of the football team. Hey, these are all fine and good. But we urge you to also think about some things that, while often overlooked, constitute the bread and butter of your college experience. Before you decide, here are 10 things you might not have thought to consider:

1. The number of requirements . These vary widely from school to school. And while it might look very impressive to see a long list of required courses, it's not so great to find yourself mired in courses that don't interest you, while you're unable to take electives in areas that do. It's even less great when you realize that some of these most unpleasant requirements were instituted by some legislator who insisted that everyone in the state needs to take State History 101. Or by some pushy department in 1950, which couldn't get students to take its courses in any other way.

2. How flexible th os e requirements are . Schools that require specific courses, with no substitutions allowed, can really put you in a bind if you'd rather take more advanced courses—or need to take more remedial courses—to fulfill that requirement. So check to see that the school allows a choice of levels to satisfy the various requirements. Also, keep in mind that anytime a school needs to route hundreds or thousands of students through Course X, Course X is going to become a sort of factory that neither the students taking the course nor the teachers teaching the course are going to like much.

Insider fact: Most professors view teaching these required courses asthe least desirable assignments—since they have to teach everyone who comes into the school—and try to avoid them like the plague.

3. Whether you can get into the classes you want to take . In the past few years, college enrollments have risen but faculty sizes often haven't grown commensurately. This can make for yards-long wait lists for some classes and shortages in first-year classes for students who didn't register on the first possible date.

4-Star Tip. If you're considering a state university in an economically distressed state (Florida, Michigan, and California come to mind), be sure to check the availability of courses before sending in your acceptance.

4. The availability of the major you want to take . Do not assume that the college you are considering actually offers every possible major. Especially if you have a very specialized major in mind, it's critical to check the list of majors at the college (the University of Minnesota, for example, offers 171 majors; nearby Carleton College, 47). Also, check out whether your major is available only by application or to a limited number of students. At certain colleges, some majors are not open to all, especially those that require talent or previous training, like music or art, or those that are extremely popular, like psychology or journalism.

5 . Whether the school has a writing requirement . You might have thought that if the school has a free-standing writing requirement (sometimes called a W course), this is a sign that the school cares about teaching you to write. Au contraire. It's actually quite often a sign that it's not typically expected that professors assign papers in their classes, and that if it were not for the requirement, you might never see a paper in your classes. Since learning to write papers is, in our opinion, one of the most important things you can accomplish in college, consider any writing requirement to be a red flag that the college isn't all too keen on teaching writing.

6. Whether — and how often — graduate stu dents teach their own courses. At many state universities and even some research universities, a significant number of instructors are graduate students. It's important to know how much of your instruction, especially in the first years of college, will be pawned off on them. A class in which a regular professor gives the lectures and the grad students lead discussion sections is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about: Indeed, it's often a good thing to have the material explained from an additional, different perspective. But a real issue arises at schools where grad students are allowed to teach entire courses on their own (that is, where graduate students are the lecturer). Some schools (for example, the University of California and the University of Texas) have policies that grad students who teach their own classes must have completed all the coursework for the Ph.D. and must have had extensive experience teaching sections and grading before they're entrusted with their own courses. But other schools will happily take entering grad students, with no teaching experience and no real graduate training in the field, and hand them their own courses to teach. The odds that the course will go well in these conditions? Well, you figure it out.

Extra Pointer. Graduate students at universities are often compared to residents at teaching hospitals. But the analogy is misleading. Residents are full-fledged doctors who have completed their medical degrees; graduate students are not professors and have not completed their academic degree.

7 . The student/faculty ratio . If you attend a school with 5 to 10 students per faculty member, you're likely to get a lot of individual attention from the faculty. A range of 11 to 15 is quite common at better state schools and equates to large intro courses but upper-division courses of a manageable size. Once you hit 16 to 20, you shouldn't be expecting much hand-holding from a professor—or even a chance to view your professor from closer than 10 feet (which in some cases could be a good thing). Over 20, you're probably at a university in such deep doo-doo that even a stimulus package won't be of much help.

8 . The percentage of students who graduate . If you go to a school with a graduation rate over 80 percent, that's great. A rate of 60 to 80 percent is quite normal. But under 60 percent should raise some eyebrows. At this point, the institution is operating with the idea that a lot of the students won't actually finish their degrees, and the program tends to be weighted toward the lower division, with much fewer resources devoted to the upper-division program. And while you're looking at graduation rates, check out the average time to degree. Seven years might be more than you're bargaining for.

9 . Whether you ' re require d to take computer-taught or on line classes . To save money, some universities are using computer programs for course instruction. Or you have to learn from lectures posted online, rather than live instructors. It's the new do-it-yourself method of instruction.

10. The a vailability of first- year experience courses . These show that the university really cares about helping entering students acclimate to the big U. Which is a nice touch.
So how do you find all this out? Check out the college guides and rankings and the college websites themselves. Ask admissions officers, students at the schools, and recent graduates. Send E-mail to appropriate college officials (they should want to answer you, if they want you to come to the school). These are not state secrets. And all of this information will help you make the best possible choice and get the most out of your college experience.