In his recent Forbes article, The COVID College Choice: How to Pick a College During a Global Pandemic, Brennan Barnard gives many excellent suggestions about resources that students can use to evaluate their college options. While campus tours and overnight visits are no longer in the cards, students have a wealth of resources to draw on incluing following colleges on social media, taking advantage of the virtual tours and information sessions, and researching the campus’s security records. In the end, what is most useful is for students to come up with their own set of criteria on which to evaluate each college and to be creative in the ways that they seek out this information.
As Brennan Barnard observes:
This is not an ideal circumstance for choosing a college, but the resourceful individual will find an approach that works best for their specific interests and hopes. This is an opportunity to employ those research and critical thinking skills that [they] have been developing throughout high school.
Ultimately, almost every big decision we make in our lives involves to some degree a leap of faith. Part of growing up is knowing when you’ve gathered enough information so that you can take that leap with pretty good confidence that you will land solidly, happily on your feet.