High school seniors should be firming up their choices for colleges to apply to in the next couple of months — early decision applications will be due in November for some schools.
Students looking for a great college should consider looking at one or more of the 40 outstanding small colleges and universities that have banded together in a group known as Colleges that Change Lives. Each is an outstanding institution that has a reputation for taking good kids and helping them transform into great people.
There are more than a dozen events planned around the nation where a score or more of the colleges will show up in one location to talk to high school students and their parents. You really should consider attending one of these events if one is close by.
We attended an event in Houston last year. Our younger son, James, eventually chose Lawrence University, a school he knew almost nothing about before that afternoon. (It appears Lawrence recovered its sanity after recruiting me to play football back in, uh, a few years ago. I didn’t attend Lawrence, and I’m greatly amused that my son will.)
Here, stolen directly from CTCL’s website, is the list of cities where events are scheduled this fall, and an interactive map. Clicking on the hot links will take you to CTCL’s site with details about the meet ups.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
I don’t know if there are equivalents elsewhere for the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. The ACM colleges are uniformly excellent in nearly all rankings, but small.
Beloit, of course (my alma mater and mentioned earlier this week in the Tub) is a member as are Cornell (IA), Lawrence, Grinnell, St Olaf, maybe Macalester, and 4 others I can’t now recall.
Yes, it is hard to hear about these wonder colleges. I wonder if that is because “college” isn’t regarded as anything special (therefore no need to look for a match)? that automatically one assumes local is cheaper? high school fads and cliques carry-over?
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Your daughters had an advantage, Art — they had a great family who knew something about these schools to start with, and they were pretty curious about colleges themselves, I’ll wager.
At my school, on the other hand, we’re lucky to find kids who know about any school outside the Big 12, plus SMU and TCU, and schools within 30 minutes of Dallas. When I was in school, I found out about Macalester and Lawrence, to pick two, solely because I got a mailing through the National Merit Scholar program.
Actually, your daughters’ choices only reify the idea that these 40 colleges really are special.
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Our youngest, Amy, will be attending one of those on the list (Juniata). Our oldest (Heather) graduates from another (The College of Wooster) next May.
We came to these choices without using this resource. I’m going to assume that this shows how discerning we were. (We don’t need to know the truth.)
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Thank you so much for this post. I’m a looking for a college and found a few that I love through that site. There aren’t many in New England, but I found Mount Holyoke, which I love, through Hampshire. Thanks again.
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Odd. I wonder why those links didn’t save. Thanks for noting the link, RBH. I’ll fix it above.
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Waiting for the flood of first-years (and parents and assorted entourage members) coming into the village Sunday, I wasn’t up for this. :) However, here’s the site for the College that Change Lives: http://www.ctcl.org/
My college isn’t on the list, but I note that several of our competitors are. Hmmmmm.
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Now is the time to begin looking into collges. You don’t want to wait until next year to get this started if you are looking to enter college in 2009. Start now, begin early. Starting out on the right foot is part of being successful in college.
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