Written by DeAnna Britton, Relate Contributing Writer

One of the most important college experiences happens before you even apply to a school. The best thing you can do in order to fully develop your choices of schools is to go and visit the campus. There are several reasons for you to do this.

When you’re trying to pick out colleges to apply to, you want to make sure you’re going to be happy there if you get accepted. The first step is deciding where you are most happy. Whether it is in the country or city or suburbia, you need to find a school that fits your criteria. For example, my checklist included city, large school population, big campus and a lot of different majors so that I could have a variety to choose from.

One good site to look on is collegeboard.com and use the college matchmaker. That’s how I found out about many colleges I had never heard of before. The best time to look is during your sophomore and junior year in high school. But remember it’s never too early to research schools you might want to go to.

During my junior year, my school made us do a junior project and we had to go visit colleges. I had my choices down to three: Fordham, New York University and Hofstra. Hofstra was my last choice because I didn’t think they had the major I wanted. So I planned an overnight visit to New York City. Most of Fordham is in the Bronx, but they did have a campus in Manhattan and that was the one I wanted to check out. I booked a campus tour with them but when I called NYU, they were all booked throughout the spring and only had openings in the summer. I was panicking at this time because I really wanted to sleep over in the city because I hadn’t done that before. So I quickly called Hofstra and set up a tour with them, too, even though they were on Long Island.

When I got to the city, it had only been my third time being there. My dad went with me and we went to Fordham first to go on the tour. Little did I know, their Manhattan campus only consisted of two very big buildings; one for academics and the other for on-campus housing. I knew Fordham was a great school, but I couldn’t see myself settling for a small campus even though the city was literally at your front door. I was disappointed and wasn’t even looking forward to Hofstra.

The next day, my dad and I ventured out onto Long Island. We got to Hofstra and I absolutely fell in love with their campus. It was very large and beautiful. This school had all of my criteria; although it wasn’t in a city, it was right next to Brooklyn and Queens and 30 minutes from Manhattan. It had a big, homey campus and a large student body. Come to find out, it had almost every major you can think of, too.

My advice would be to pick out your list of colleges and go visit them all. I was expecting to fall in love with Fordham and ended up not liking it at all. It’s hard to predict,-so it’s better if you go experience it yourself. You could end up making your last pick your number one choice just like me. Make sure to write down exactly what you want in your college experience and never settle for anything less. There are colleges that will fit your wants and needs perfectly. That college is out there and it’s waiting to be discovered by the right people.

College is such a big stepping stone to the rest of your life- make sure when you look back on it, it’s exactly where you wanted to be and exactly where you needed to be.

Tags: after high school graduation, College Living, college search, Hofstra University, picking a college