College admission.  It looms over students  — often from an early age.  There’s so much anticipation, excitement — and pressure – around college admissions that sometimes parents and their students may not know where to begin.  How to you find just the right college?  How do you know whether the match is a perfect one?

The first thing that students and their parents need to recognize is that there probably is no perfect match.  Current research is suggesting that success in college, as well as after college, may have less to do with where a student attends and more to do with the student’s experiences and attitude while in school.  This is important information and may help to relieve pressure on some students around finding the ”perfect” school.

As your student begins to explore colleges, a good place to begin is by thinking about what matters to them.  If they have an interest in a particular major, does that school have a good program in that area?  If they are an athlete, will they have an opportunity to play?  What extracurricular activities matter?  How important is location?  The hundreds of options will begin to narrow as your student begins to focus on the things that are important to them.

But how will your student get a real sense of each school?  There are many things that you and your student can do as part of the ”getting acquainted” process of exploring a particular school.  Here are 15 possibilities.  Some are obvious and others may be approaches you haven’t considered.  Use any or all of them to get a true picture of a school.

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