Help "U" Help You

Okay, there's a good chunk of online discussion and traffic about college admissions "matchmakers." Our two cents from U Sphere:

One Size Does Not Fit All.

Our favorite word is "holistic." Discovering the right schools for you should be a holistic process. You're more than your grades, test scores, extracurriculars, ability to answer a few essay questions, those sorts of things. You rely on gut instinct -- that cell phone looks cool, I don't want to be seen with my parents EVER, this pizza is horrible.

So if anyone says that this process is supposed to be simple, easy, cut-and-dried, it's not.

Advice: Get a few opinions. Kick the tires. (Or, if you're British, "tyres.") Visit. Talk to students. Hang out on campuses. Hang out OFF campuses. Find out what makes a place tick -- sniff around online, see what people blog about, check out profiles of students on myspace and facebook. Why? There are 4000-plus colleges in the USA ALONE. (And more if you count Canada, the UK, Europe, the Far East.)

And fill out a few applications (including ours, of course). You'll want to have more than just one option at your disposal.