How to Choose a College

This past week, I chose to spend a significant amount of my time looking at colleges and universities. I think it's very important for me to work on my future plans, and the first step after high school is college. Going into this week, I knew that two of the colleges I was interested in were the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I chose UT because I believe it is an attainable in-state school for me, and I chose UMich because living in Ann Arbor for almost ten years and having a brother attending the school taught me a lot about the campus and the environment.

I still needed to learn whether or not these schools were right for a student looking into pursuing civil engineering. After a bit of research, I discovered that both of these schools had very highly ranked civil engineering programs, which definitely piqued my interest. Furthermore, both of these universities have chapters of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The ASCE is an organization that provides resources and a community for civil engineers and engineering students to learn and discuss about the field, and I think this would be a great organization for me to get involved with in college.

Although this week I only focused on two colleges, I'd like to expand my horizons and look into other universities in the future. In the coming weeks, however, my priorities will be to work on project ideas for the rest of the year, and begin interviews with professionals. I think things are starting to really take off, and I'm excited (and a little nervous) about the future!