What size of a college?

How big of a college campus do you want?  It is a question that we ask students a lot and to be honest, I kind of hate it as a question.  How could you possibly know how to give a number to say that a certain size was what you were looking for in a campus?  I would like to encourage you to think about the size of a campus that will be right for you in comparison to your learning and social experiences in high school.

For example, these might be some reflection questions you should ask yourself...

- When learning do you like to establish a positive relationship with your teacher and does that impact how much/ well you learn in the class?

- Do you enjoy meeting lots of new people and look at opportunities when you walk into a room where you don't know anyone as the chance to meet new friends?

- If you walk into the commons without knowing who will/ will not be there are you going to be comfortable or nervous?

- If you are eating lunch somewhere and saw your teacher walk past, would you be comfortable saying hello to them or would you rather blend into the background and hope that he/ she wouldn't know/ recognize you?

Why is it that I think these are more helpful questions? The answers you give to these questions will help to guide your thinking on if you would do better with a smaller environment vs a larger environment.  But it's also important that I point out that small and large are relative.  How would you refer to the size of our high school?  Most people would just say it's "normal or average" but that isn't really true - it is just what you are familiar with.  In fact, the average high school in the United States has 752 students while WKHS has over 1300 students.  So you might think that you don't want a small college (and you might not), but if you are making that choice based on size, you need to remember that the smaller college which might have like 5,000 students is actually still 4 times as large as WKHS.  So it would be like your college graduating class size being comparable to the whole student body at WKHS and you definitely don't know everyone at WKHS.  Along those same lines, you might think you want a large college, but what is large to you?  Is large 20,000 students or 40,000 students?

Here's the reality, you only have 24 hours in a day.  A solid chunk of that time will be spent sleeping not to mention the time you will spend in class and studying.  So you will only have a limited amount of time left in the day.  So sometimes people inaccurately think that they have to go to a large school to get a college that will have plenty of opportunities for them.  And even though it is awesome to see that a college has hundreds of groups that students can get involved with, you won't have the interest to join most of them and then time will also limit how many groups you'd be able to join at once.  So this means that if the smaller college (who may have just dozens of groups to get involved with) has the same top 2-3 groups that you actually would have had time for at the larger college, then your on-campus experiences with those groups would actually be similar.

Sometimes students want the large campus for the experiences such as a good school spirit or a positive sports culture to rally behind your team.  That is totally understandable.  Remember though, large campuses don't automatically guarantee those components.  Instead try to pay attention to how many people are proud of the campus and community.  Are students and staff proud to be associated with the college?  That would help you to get an idea of their school spirit.  For sports environment, remember that there are LOTS of different collegiate sports levels and so you can find school spirit in a variety of sizes of campus.  (Some D1 schools are bigger and others are smaller so it isn't even just by what division they compete in for their sports.)

Hopefully this helps to give you questions that would guide you towards the size that would fit better for you than just asking "what size do you want?"  The reality is you will be successful at whatever college you pick, but try to really make sure you find the experience that will feel most comfortable for you academically and socially.

Here are some articles related to picking colleges which might interest you:

10 steps to choosing the right college

The 50 Ugliest College Campuses

US News Best Colleges Rankings Released