How to Search for U.S. Universities

I’m sure there are many readers who have waited for this post for the last few days and I did spend considerable sometime to get all the necessary information that you’ll need, guys. This post will be more useful for those who haven’t applied to any university and graduate school yet, and are still wondering about their university/college admission chances.

In some previous posts, I talked about how to email professors after applying for college admissions at different graduate schools.

If you happen to value the idea behind shortlisting U.S. universities for graduate school admissions, you do need more time to read about colleges and universities, departments, to gather information that you’ll needed for making a sound decision.

Ultimately, you will benefit from the work and time that you’ll be investing. If you wonder how some people were able to get accepted at top schools despite having low GRE scores, with even some ending up getting college admissions with scholarship or aid, it’s actually a simple process.

They followed almost the same things like the tips and steps I’m going to discuss in this article.

Step 1

Question: How do I select a few universities and schools when there are simply too many available to choose from?

The process of gaining some knowledge about universities and colleges should start the very moment you decided to study in the U.S.

Browse through the university/college websites to know about university/college admission requirements for international students, what courses are offered, the cost of university/college education, scholarship information, and many more. Just make a list of requirements that they ask for.

If you don’t know what information to look for, the following will help:

• Minimum GRE score
• Minimum TOEFL score
• Tuition Fee
• Deadline schedules (for Spring, Fall, Summer).

Don’t randomly browse for universities with the idea of shortlisting them. This will just help you get acquainted with the U.S. educational system, website structure, and college itself. This is a good thing as it offers general information, but what you need now are specific details on which university or grad school you’ll be qualified to pursue.

If you have done your homework, you could very well apply for the same schools where you have forwarded your GRE and TOEFL scores after your took those exams.

Step 2

Question: I already have my GRE and TOEFL scores but I still don’t have much information about the universities, how is shortlisting universities done?

This is when you will start looking for universities’ ranking to match your scores. But you may not find any ranking that will match your score and list universities.

If this happens, you will likely ask your friends for tips, maybe apply to the same schools where some of your friends had already applied at, post queries in social media asking for readers to vote, or even undergo college admission counseling looking for college admission tip or college admission assistance.

When you are investing serious money, let’s say some $20,000 to $50,000 for your education, you must be very aware of all the information about the school when you apply.

Now you don’t have that much time, when you have less than 6 to 8 months left before the semester starts.

At this point, I do suggest that you follow what I said above. Make your own list of schools (around 20 colleges/universities should do the trick) from your friends, online fora, counselors, etc., and use those info to understand what each school requires.

Once you start browsing through the list that you’ve created, you will now get the “feel” for each school. Let’s call this as List A.

Next, from your list of universities categorize schools by State, make a selection to arrive at a shortlist. If you have a GRE score of 1,300, delete those universities from your List A if their minimum requirement is 1,000.

So now you have a shorter, more manageable roster of universities and colleges. Use this to create List B, as these are schools with minimum requirements that will get you accepted based on GRE score. But at this point, don’t consider the cost of education yet.

Some colleges and universities have percentile requirements. Check them out and based on that, cross-out colleges and universities that you don’t qualify in List A.

Keep on refining your List B by eliminating colleges and universities from List A.

Once you have around 10 schools in both lists, then the real work begins.

Step 3

Question: How many schools to select from List B?
Question: How to reduce Lists A and B to less than 8 to 10 schools?

For a more in-depth post on selecting universities in List B, keep on reading my articles. I should be posting again within 2 days’ time.

I know this is a time-consuming process, but if you ask around, especially the people who applied at good universities with aid, you will understand that each and every second that will be spent when shortlisting universities using this approach is valuable.

I hope you will enjoy this post. If so feel free to pass this article around to your friends and please do leave a short comment.

I still haven’t posted the Taste of Alaska with pictures. I should find some time to upload a few pictures and send the link.

Continuation is Happy Point Method to select Universities