The College Board's Search Engine

As a student approaches college, it is crucial that they begin to prepare by researching institutions that are an appropriate fit for them. In the early goings, this can be done online and there are a multitude of resources on the internet that discuss the differences in individual colleges. There is one such resource in particular that I have found to be user friendly, comprehensive, and powerful.

        The College Board’s college search engine can be found bigfuture.collegeboard.com. This website is the landing page for the College Board’s post-secondary planning tool which includes excellent information on careers and steps on how to reach those careers. Perhaps, I’ll discuss those in-depth in the future. When, at this site, I find that I spend most of my time on the college search engine.

        This is a terrific tool. You’ll find it associated with the words “Find Colleges”. Once you access the search engine, you’ll find a series of filters on the left side. These are what make this site so great. The search engine starts with over 3700 institutions of higher learning in the United States. The filters allow you to boil that number down to a list of schools that might meet a variety of very specific needs.

        For many, this starts with geography and, indeed, that’s one of the filters. If you are certain you want to go to college in North Carolina you can search for only schools in North Carolina. Or, you could expand that to schools in the South. If you’re certain you want an urban setting, you can adjust your filters to that. Next, suppose you’re convinced you want to study geology--filter for that. If you’re hoping for a chance to walk on to a women’s lacrosse team, you’ll need to make sure your school has a program in that so you can adjust your filter accordingly. Lastly, what if you’re SAT scores are quite where you’d like them to be? You can plug those numbers into the search engine too and find schools that fit your academic capabilities.

I used SAT scores of 500 Math and 500 Reading and Writing as well as the other above criteria which is all pretty specific. That gave me a list of eight schools. There are some more filters I didn’t even use but maybe you’re not familiar with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. That was one of my results. It’s a school I think I’ve heard of but don’t know much about. After all, no one can know everything about all 3700 colleges in the United States.

However, if I’m a future lacrosse playing, geology major with a 1000 score at an urban campus in the South, UNC at Greensboro is a school I need to know about. Now, I do and I can link directly to more information and the school’s website from the search engine. Maybe, I wouldn’t end up at a school like UNC at Greensboro but at least it’s on my radar now and that’s really the point of this exercise. Using this tool can expose the student to schools that are actually a really good fit for them but that they might not know about. I’d encourage any student to play with this early on in high school in order to find a crop of schools to consider as they move closer to graduation.