Getting College Insight

Summer is a great time to be able to ask questions of your friends who are home from college about what their experience has been like. Types of questions you might want to consider asking include:

- What did they like best about college? Least?
- What best prepared them for college?
- Did their college search give them an accurate picture of what college would really be like?
- Are there particular things they would recommend that you look at or consider when researching schools?
- How large are the majority of their classes? Biggest class? Smallest?
- What activities did they get involved in on campus?
- Was it easy to make friends at school?
- If they could go back and repeat their high school years over again, would they have done anything different? Would they still have made the same choices about where to apply and attend?

Those are just a few ideas to get you started. It is really important to keep in mind that just because a school was the right college for your friends or your siblings it doesn't necessarily mean that it will be the right fit for you.

In my experience, students are always more than happy to spend some time talking about their first year (or two) of college. Take full advantage of the opportunity - it really might help guide you in your own college search, or, at the very least, hopefully it will motivate you to start exploring colleges for yourself.