That's a Good Question

What to ask and why to ask it

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

There are thousands of colleges and universities in the United States, which means the odds are good that most high schoolers will eventually get a brochure or marketing email from at least a few schools that they’ve never heard of, from places they’ve never been.

In fact, over the course of a junior and senior year, a kid who has taken a few standardized tests and/or created an account on a site like Common App or Niche or College Board may find that they suddenly get more mail than everyone else in their family combined. According to some estimates, the average student’s name and info get sold 18 times over the course of their final years in high school, with some students (usually those with high test scores and other desirable characteristics) getting sold upwards of 50 or 60 times.

While the upside of all this recruitment mail is that students can feel flattered and optimistic about their options, the downside is that it can also be a little overwhelming. Given that every school can make themselves look amazing in a brochure and they all often brag about the same things (engaged faculty! vibrant student life! boundless opportunities! study abroad!), it takes a little work to start actually digging in to find out what the school really has to offer.

As someone who has worked in higher education for over two decades, I’ve had some time to develop my list of questions that I’m using with my own son to help us start sifting through some of the schools whose brochures have caught his eye so far.

(And yes, I’m familiar with A LOT of schools, but not all of them, so I’m always doing research too).

Here are some of the questions I’m asking when it comes to screening four year colleges¹ and why I think they matter:

• What percentage of freshman live on campus? For the out-of-state colleges on my kid’s list, I want a high percentage of first year students living on campus versus a commuter school, because on campus living can be a key way to find community. For local schools, this is less of a concern.

• What are the on-campus housing options after the first year and how many students keep living on campus? I’m especially interested in the answer to this question for schools that are located in places where housing is both expensive and in short supply. Off campus housing for some popular schools can easily cost $5000-15,000 more per year than on-campus housing, so places with expanded student housing can be a little more affordable.

• What percentage of students do Greek life? This question is short hand for “will my kid have to consider being involved in a fraternity to feel like he has a place on campus?” This is both a cost question (Greek life fees can add thousands of dollars to the costs of college) and a fit question (if my kid doesn’t want to go Greek, a school like Washington and Lee with where 75% of students are Greek isn’t going to be the right choice). I’m looking for schools that are 20% Greek or less.

• What percentage of undergraduate classes have more than 50 students? College often cite their low average classes sizes and student-to-faculty ratios, but those numbers can be misleading, especially if they aren’t disaggregating between undergraduate and graduate classes. I like to find out the percent of classes that are over 50 students to get a better sense of how many big lecture classes my kid is likely to experience in the first two years before they get into upper division classes that typically get smaller.

• How many students graduate in four years? Graduation rate data is usually reported based on a six year (or sometimes eight year) range, so I want to know how likely it is that my kid will be able to get done in four years, largely to save on the costs of a fifth or sixth year. Typically, the four year grad rate is going to be higher at smaller and more selective schools, but I’d like to see 50% or higher for large publics, because this tells me that students are generally able to get the classes they need to finish on time.

• What percentage of first year students come back for their second year? One of the things I want for my kid is to be able to find community and to make friends on campus. To do that, people need to stick around for more than one year. This is another area where my expectations for what a “good” retention rate is varies by type of institution. Schools that are more selective typically have higher retention rates, so I would side eye any selective school that has a retention rate below 95% but I’m impressed by a large public that is at 85%. I would have significant reservations about any four year with a one year retention rate of less than 70%.

• Who provides academic advising? Some schools have professional academic advisors (people whose full time job is advising) and some schools use faculty advisors (people for whom advising is part of their non-teaching service to the college). This is an area where I have bias: I don’t love faculty advising. The skills that make someone excellent at teaching chemistry may be entirely different skills than the ones needed to help someone figure out if they want to switch their major, how to build a workable schedule, whether or not to do an internship, etc. Most college students will change their major at some point in their first two years, so I want them to be working with someone who can help them navigate all of their choices, not just the ones in a particular department.

• What percentage of students get institutional aid? Especially for out-of-state and private colleges, I want to get a sense of how much tuition discounting they are doing. My go to resource to answer this question is the NCES College Navigator tool. I want to see 60% or more getting institutional aid.

• What percentage of their undergraduates are white? I would be very, very uncomfortable with my kid being at a school that is 80% or more white students, especially given that he currently plans to major in a field that tends to be overrepresented by white students.

• What is the average student loan debt level at graduation and how many students graduate with student loans? I’m anticipating that my kid will have to take out some student loans and our goal is to keep his total loan debt under $30,000 and with no private loans, so I want to see how that compares to the loan levels of current students.

These questions are usually my second layer of screening. We start with the big things first: size (my kid wants a bigger school so anything under 10,000 undergrads is probably off the list), location (adios schools in the no-no states), and selectivity (while my kid is a good student with a fine GPA, I don’t think highly selective schools are the right fit for him). These are the questions that, assuming the school is in location and size range my kid wants, might help us decide if he wants to do a deeper dive or campus visit.

A note about my list above: colleges and universities absolutely have the answers to these questions, but they may or may not make them easy to find. I might start with a light Google or check to see if they have a fact book online (these are usually produced by their institutional research department and have a lot of good data on things like student demographics, graduation rates, costs, etc.). If I can’t find it, I’ll ask their admissions representative who should be able to pull that data for me.

Finally, another quick way to learn more about a school is to look online for their student newspaper. The student newspaper can be a good place to find out not only what kind of activities are happening on campus but also what’s currently controversial or the hot topic among their students. It’s a good counterbalance to the “everything is awesome all the time!” messaging of admissions brochures.

Ultimately these questions alone won’t choose his college for him. He’ll need to visit some places and see how the campus experience feels, but this may help us eliminate some options and get to a tighter list of choices. Vibes will probably matter as much to him as data does to me!

1. I have a different set of questions for community and technical colleges since they offer a different experience