What Do I Have To Do To Get You Into A College Today...

It's high time that my family buys a minivan, what with three kids and all, and it's interesting to see the parallels between college search/college planning/college applications and shopping for a car.

(I'm going to coin a new term -- "college shopping" -- to describe this whole college process. You'll see some of the interesting things I've unearthed below.)

We're not done with this process yet -- we have narrowed it down to one and actually put a deposit down. So we're pretty much there, however I won't tell you which one we've picked. (And it would be unethical of me to put another deposit down on another vehicle, right?) But here are some preliminary thoughts.

Car shopping. You could walk into a dealer rather blindly and ask to test drive the latest hot model. Few people do that. If they do, they automatically find themselves behind the negotiating 8-ball.

Dealers -- the smart ones at least -- expect that people have visited all of the sites (Edmunds.com, which is this reporter's personal favorite, or cars.com are the two biggies.). An informed consumer is one that is actually more likely to convert into a sale if everything is right.

There could be some quirks in the process, sure: my wife and I were pretty much sure we were going to get Model A, but Model B came in from left field. More on that once we go public with our decision.

We also were surprised that Model C -- HINT: one of the "best in class" -- wasn't all we were told. It didn't have as much pep. The bare bones model is pretty bare bones. Etc.

It was a long process -- we've probably test driven 10 different models over the past two years, when you count rental vans and the like. We had our hit list, we didn't stray too far from it.

And we plan on having this for at least four years. Once the dealer locates the right color.

College shopping. It's probably a complete waste of time to formally visit Harvard if you're planning on the community college route. You know beforehand -- or you SHOULD know beforehand -- whether or not there's a chance you'll fit in.

(This is why we didn't test drive the new Toyota FJ Cruiser; this instead went into the "Dave's midlife crisis car" category.)

You probably know what make and model of school you're looking for. You've, we hope, visited quite a few -- even the ones you have no intention of attending. You know that you're not after a hot rod, or a two-seat convertible. And you hopefully know what you're willing to pay.

More on this subject after the weekend...hopefully with a brand spanking new (INSERT MODEL HERE) in the driveway.