Humming to Higher Ed

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

The season is upon us. Squirrels are collecting their winter nuts, the geese are flying off in formation, the hummingbirds headed south — and how the heck do they do that, anyway? Also, the high school seniors are beginning their long college visitation treks, which appear to take longer and require even more effort than that hummingbird thing.

There are more than 2,000 four-year institutions of higher learning alone in the United States. How are you supposed to make a selection?

I was always a proponent of the idea that it didn’t really matter much where you went to school. This was based in part on the fact that I chose my own alma mater, Marquette, because it was the only university that sent a recruiter to my high school. The recruiter told us that Marquette was only for people who were ready to be treated like adults, and imagine my surprise on the first day when I discovered that the women couldn’t leave the dorms in slacks unless they were going bowling.

But that was a long time ago, before picking a college was a science. Now coming up with a list of top choices is easy because you can log onto any number of find-your-college sites, put in your academic interests, your financial considerations, your geographical preferences and so on. Pretty soon you will get a batch of schools that meet your criteria.

(More here.)