Hi Scared in Leone!
You are not alone. Trust me. Every year, literally hundreds of thousands of high school seniors (I’m including the mainland U.S. of course) go through the same process that you are about to begin. The first thing to keep in mind is that there are many different resources available to students like yourself who are beginning the college application process. In fact, there might be such a thing as TOO MUCH information.
Keep it simple, and begin by having an end in mind. Immediately start narrowing your choices from the beginning. That means asking yourself the simple questions first, the ones that don’t have anything to do with academics: Do you want to stay close to home, at least initially, or are you more the adventurous type and are looking to start college in a different city away from home? Are you REALLY adventurous and don’t mind going far away to a distant college or are you more of a “medium-sized” kind of adventurous and want to go away, but not TOO far? Do you think you can handle cold weather or are you more comfortable in warmer climes?
It may sound obvious but the simple geographic location of your school (East Coast? West Coast? South? Midwest?) and the kind of weather and culture associated with the cities and towns of the colleges to which you’re interesting in attending should be major considerations when deciding where to apply. These things will affect what’s called your “quality of life” and will greatly affect your success rate once you are there. Someone who is not able to handle cold weather, for example, can probably immediately cross off from their list colleges in cities like Boston, MA or even New York, NY.
Another somewhat obvious consideration that many students often overlook when deciding where to go to college is the role that “culture” plays in their lives. Whether you are a student on island, in America, or elsewhere in the world, you are automatically influenced and affected by the people in your life (friends, family, relatives, society at large) and the area of the world from which you come. Keep in mind I am not simply speaking about culture as it relates to ethnic heritage (e.g. being Samoan or even Polynesian). The world “culture” is used in the academic and business world in a much larger context, and there are many kinds of “culture”—academic, corporate, personal, social, etc. Remember the different kinds of “culture” to which you are accustomed given where you are from and how comfortable you are leaving that environment. Do the colleges you are interested in applying to have student populations similar in size, scope, and makeup to the kind of academic and social culture to which you are accustomed or in which you would most likely feel comfortable? Universities on the east coast of the U.S., for example, would be vastly different in terms of culture for a student born and raised on island than, say, colleges in places like Hawaii or even Los Angeles or Seattle, simply because those cities in general have larger Pacific Islander student populations (and larger at-large populations as well).
The good news is that the Internet makes weighing all these considerations much easier. When I was in high school getting ready to apply to college, all I had to go on were whatever already-worn, printed college catalogs were in my academic counselor’s office. If you knew somebody already in college or your parents happened to have friends with children either already away at college or who had graduated—that was also another way for high school students back then to get their bearings. If I was interested in a college for which my counselor didn’t happen to have the catalog (which was more than likely the case), I had to order the catalog (by mail) and wait a month or even two for it to arrive by snail mail. Yes, “snail” mail. There was no “email” back in the day.
Once you’ve started to think about or even answer just some of questions that I posed above and you start to settle on a list of potential schools, start the research process. Thoroughly visit all the websites of the colleges that you are considering. If there are virtual tours or pictures of the school, take time to look at them and imagine yourself sitting in a classroom there. Read any blogs or forums and try to get a sense for the student population at that particular school—for the culture of that school. Is it a big or small school? Are there other Pacific Islanders or even students from your high school or rival high schools at this particular college? Make sure you begin a dialogue with the various admission departments at the colleges you are considering and ask them all the relevant questions. They will know the answers in most cases (if they don’t, they can find out) and can tell you all the little things that will matter to you, for example, like whether there is a vibrant Pacific Islander population (e.g. most colleges have “Pacific Islander”—P.I.—clubs or larger, umbrella organizations that would include P.I. students) or just how cold or warm it really gets in that city or town. Above all, don’t be afraid to ask any questions. The only dumb questions, of course, are the ones we don’t ask. Don’t get caught drowning in the details. Break everything down in little steps, and gradually, you’ll find yourself making an informed decision that will in all likelihood maximize your chances for success.
