Parenting Pointers: Choosing the Right College

Even if your children are a long way away from college, it's never too early to start learning about it. Finding the right college is not easy - the reality that one-third of all students transfer colleges at least once before earning a degree suggests that students are making costly and time consuming mistakes with their college choices.

The experts at Noodle Education have identified 10 common mistakes parents and high school students make when selecting at college:

• Overemphasizing rankings and reputations
• Looking only at the sticker price and failing to consider financial aid
• Not visiting the college
• Following significant other’s college choices
• Choosing a party school for partying
• Worrying too much about location and distance
• Following friends
• Choosing a school on the basis of rebelling against advice of parents and others
• Legacy - choosing a school only because parents did
• Overemphasizing a single major or career path

To help avoid some of these pitfalls, Noodle.org, the new life-long education search engine, provides students with free access to the largest compilation of education resources anywhere on the web. Noodle.org’s groundbreaking search and recommendation engine allows parents and students to choose schools based on their personal or family preferences, including school size, public vs. private schools, location and cost.

I had a chance to interview Dan Edmonds, VP of Research and Development at Noodle Education, to get more insight.

1) Instead of looking at the "sticker price," how can families figure out what their cost will be?

Noodle has a helpful calculator that will give users a ballpark estimate of what most families are paying for a particular school or estimate what families using financial aid are currently paying. These days, with so many complex payment options, it really requires a deep dive to determine the exact cost of a school for each individual family. So the "real cost" number listed on our site is intended to help people gauge how much a school would be willing to give in financial aid and estimate the overall cost.

2) Why is visiting the college so important?

All colleges can look perfect in those glossy brochures, but that doesn't give families a true sense of how the professors teach, the core of the campus culture or how the surrounding areas look and feel. That said, college tours can be expensive and time consuming. How do you go about narrowing the focus to a select few colleges to visit? Noodle can help you narrow down your options and make an informed decision about college. That way, you can make sure the time and money invested in your next college tour is well spent!

3) When it comes to college programs, why should students consider a college that specializes or a college that has a broad range of programs?

This scenario truly varies from student to student. On the one hand, at more specialized schools, students cannot radically change majors; they would be forced to transfer schools if they truly had a change of heart. On the other hand, the programs at the best of these specialized schools are among the best in the nation and there are advantages to being surrounded by people pursuing the same interests. Students who are remotely unsure of their major or career path should probably avoid specialized schools. Students who are committed to their field should carefully weigh the pros and cons, and, if possible, visit programs at both the more specialized schools and broader universities to observe which sort of program is more appealing in person.

4) What features does Noodle.org have to help parents and students in their college search?

Noodle considers finding the right college for our users to be a combination of three components:  

1. Where can you get in that will challenge you?

2. What school fits your criteria (location, cost, etc.)

3. Where’s a school where you’ll thrive?

These are very personal choices, and Noodle is there to provide users with the best information so that students and parents can make the most informed choice possible. Once users narrow their college selection and want to engage with friends, family and others who have shared experiences, Noodle.org enables them to share their findings from the site via Facebook and Twitter, and save their results for easy access. Noodle.org also offers a comparison feature, where users can drag and drop their choices, and compare statistics like cost, location and rankings side by side!

About Noodle Education
Noodle Education created the first and only life-long education search engine in the world.  Noodle.org enables users to find the right school, college, tutor, instruction video, or any other education resource -- and it’s free.Headquartered in New York City,Noodle was created in 2011 by a powerhouse team of education innovators from The Princeton Review, 2U, Kaplan, Kumon and Colloquy. The company has been recognized by Forbes Magazine, as “one of the 6 fastest growing tech companies” and hailed by Mashable, as “one of the 5 startups transforming online education.”

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