The Foreign Service Journal, December 2018

102 DECEMBER 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT fields you’re interested in. Here’s where the internet shines. Below are some websites where you can search for colleges by major, location and other factors. You will probably need at least two one-hour ses- sions to devote to this task—but this varies greatly depending on your research style and how deeply you want to dig. For colleges in the United States (and some in Canada): https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/ college-search —College Board’s Big Future offers a lot of tools to help you in your college search. http://www.diycollegerankings. com —Counselor/parent Michelle Kretzschmar manages a site that ranks colleges in a completely different way than the usual rankings. For her, easily paying for higher education without going into debt and graduating from college in no more than four years are the top priori- ties. And if you’re an athlete looking to continue playing your sport at college, her additional focus on college athletics is informative. https://nces.ed.gov/collegenaviga tor —This is a comprehensive site where you can search by state and by major and get all sorts of stats on every college. Once you’ve found a couple of colleges using the online tools above, try going to http://www.collegeresults.org , where when you type in the name of one college, the site will provide you with the names of similar colleges. Although the U.S. News &World Report college rankings have been given toomuch weight by the media, you can use them to search for factors such as merit aid: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/ rankings/most-merit-aid . U.S. News and other ranking sites do give you a general idea of what a Traditional U.S. institutions allowyou to dabble for your first two years of college, declaring yourmajor in the spring of sophomore year.