October 2009 Quick Overview of College Searching Resources

Task 1: Check out relevant admission criteria at the three state universities

NAU Admissions Criteria: http://home.nau.edu/admissions/apply/admissreq.asp

ASU Admissions Criteria: http://students.asu.edu/freshman/requirements

U of A Admissions Criteria: https://admissions.arizona.edu/requirements/freshmen.aspx

Task 2: Become Familiar with Resources Available from The College Board

Main Student Portal at College Board Site:

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/index.html?student

This should be one of your bookmarks/favorites on your browser at home.

Task 3A: Set up a free collegeboard.com (My Organizer) account if you have never yet done so.

Do this at:

https://ecl.collegeboard.com/account/AccountProfile2.jsp?applicationId=0&destinationpage=https://myorganizer.collegeboard.com/my_organizer/MyOrganizer.jsp

PLEASE NOTE ALL THE INFO IN THE BLUE BOXES. If you lack information right now in class, leave this part until home. If you want to create a separate email identity/account for the purpose of your college stuff, wait until home to do that. (This is especially the case if your current email name is inappropriate for college admission officers’ eyes.)

Task 3B: Set up a My Road account with College Board if you have never yet done so.

You will only be able to do this for free if you took the PSAT last year. I have the list of student codes which were also on your PSAT score reports; you will need yours to make an account.

http://myroad.collegeboard.com/myroad/navigator.jsp?t=homepage&i=index

Here is the link for the tour of what the My Road section includes:

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/myroad/tour/index.html

Task 3C: Set up a My College QuickStart account with College Board if you have never yet done so.

You will only be able to do this for free if you took the PSAT last year. I have the list of student codes which were also on your PSAT score reports; you will need yours to make an account.

If you did not take the PSAT last year, but are this year, you should still register your email address on this screen – you’ll get notified in December when they post PSAT scores.

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/psat/quickstart.html?BannerID=ba_190554&AffiliateID=1

Here is the link for the demo of how the QuickStart section works – going over your PSAT results and setting you up to move on from there:

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/psat/demo/quickstart_demo_1.html

Task 4: Become Familiar with the Resources Available Regarding Careers & Majors.

Start here:

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/csearch/majors_careers/index.html

Note the existence of the profiles of careers and majors, as well as some topical articles below those links.

These profiles are useful as places to browse. Some people focus on career choices and work backwards to learn what majors & education lead up to those careers. Others decide what they like to study first and later on figure out how to find a career that makes use of that learning. Both approaches are valid depending on your philosophy of life. The profiles are even more useful when paired with the results of your personality profile and interest inventory you create in the MyRoad section.

Task 5: Become Familiar with the College Search Engine.

Here’s the starting point:

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/csearch/

Go to the MatchMaker feature and run through the exercise of selecting criteria to narrow your search from 3852 colleges to a more reasonable number.

NOTE: Did you notice that if you have an account set up it gives you the capability of storing searches? You won’t exercise the searching tool just once – you might use different criteria at different times, so the save feature is useful.

CHECK OUT the handy “More Tools” pull box on the left of this screen. It has shortcuts to many useful parts of the website, including AP credit policies and lots of financial planning & financial aid tools (parents will really want to check out the EFC calculator).