how i did my college search? first, you take a clean sheet of | Levsha's entrance records

how i did my college search?
first, you take a clean sheet of paper (better be physical), write down all unis you dream of studying in. second, you go to this and write down all unis that give fin aid (including partial down to 85%). then, you remove all that is notorious for rejecting all who ask for full fin aid (colgate?). You are left with around 35 unis. after that, you remove all colleges which do not have your major (I’m not sure f.e if you can study biomed engineering at CMUQ). You still have around 30 schools, 12-15 of which are HYPSM, Duke, Northwestern, UChicago and top Liberal Arts Colleges like Williams and Amherst. Now it’s time to open deeper stats like acceptance rates, average SAT scores. ask yourself, do you really want to study at MIT or any other close one, and are you sure enough that you will handle the academic rigor, social (extremely liberal!) atmosphere? I’m sure most of your answers are yes but, anyways, we have to remove some. Therefore, you take a closer look in seach uni by looking various dimensions like climate (mb u don’t want cold weather?), location (mb u don’t want NYC?), sports (f.e you want to do judo but that uni doesn’t have tatami?).
you still have 20-25 options. if you want to apply ED, you want to be as specific in your preferences as possible. it’s better if ur ed choice is your dream school, but you actually want to get in somewhere with decent scholarship, so applying to Harvard just because it’s your dream school and it gives full aid may not be a good option. to find balance, open reddit&college website/YouTube and read a lot about what your possible ed options are looking for in applicants. You can also attend (or even appint at some) information sessions where you can learn a lot about the college and also ask questions. You are roughly left with 5-6 colleges for ED round. I will explain how I chose that one school and some backup options in the next post.
thank yourself for being patient enough to read the entire post and save it.
@levshasentrancerecords1