Create Your Best Fit List

I’m going to walk you through my process of what we do when we do a best fit list for someone with all that information you gathered thus far.

Slide 1: Lesson 3 – Create Your Own Short List

Okay, so let's get started with Lesson Three. I'm super excited about this lesson, because I'm basically going to walk you through my process of what we do when we do a best fit list for someone with all that information you gathered thus far. 

Slide 2: Emma’s Action Steps

  • $10K per year for US
  • €11,489 for 3 year programs
  • Housing = €843 per month
  • €9,849 for 3.5 year programs
  • €8,617 for 4 years
  • Travel $1,000 per round trip ticket

So basically, all of the information that you filled out so far with your action steps, is what I would use if I were doing a best fit list for you. So I've created a student to use for this example, Emma. So here's the information that we gathered from her action steps. The first one around budget, she was looking at in-state schools. So her budget, if she were looking in the US, was $10,000 a year. Again, that would be for a four year program. So we broke that down into what it would be in Euros for three, three-and-a-half, and four year programs. 

So she saw that room and board at her state school was $11,556 per school year. It's important for us to note that that's not for a 12 month year, that's for a nine month year. So she divided that number by nine to get her monthly room and board number. Now as we've talked about though, we need to take meals out of that number. So you note that for your housing budget in Europe. So she subtracted $300 a month for food, which gave her a housing budget of $984 or €843 per month. 

Then she used Google Flights, put in some random dates from RDU to Paris. She made sure to do some around the holidays, because it's important to see what that does to prices. And most likely, Christmas will be one of the times that you come home. And they ranged from $750 to $1,200. So we're averaging that out at $1,000 a ticket. So given that her housing budget is likely much higher than she's going to need, she has a little bit of wiggle room and doesn't need to adjust her tuition budget. 

Slide 3: Emma’s Action Steps

  • Junior, has one AP score of 4, taking two AP courses now, planning one in senior year
  • Location dealbreakers – easy to get around city, easy to travel outside of the country, winter weather, minimal housing headaches
  • Had a 504 plan in high school
  • Large number of options for activities
  • Fields of study: economics, law, international relations, political science, sociology, and peace & conflict studies

So Emma's a junior. She took one AP her sophomore year. She's taking two this year. And she's planning to take one next year. She's interested in economics, law, international relations, political science, sociology, and peace & conflict studies. She had a 504 plan in high school for ADHD. She didn't use accommodations by the end of high school, but she wants to make sure that she goes to a school that can help with this, if needed. She's interested in programs that include interactions with professors and lots of class discussions. Remember we talked before about, you know, educational philosophy and educational approach? This was one of her dealbreakers for that. She's really open when it comes to location. Her dealbreakers are living someplace that's easy to get around the city, easily accessible to travel to other countries. So we'll be looking at walkability, we'll be looking at public transportation, and getting to other countries and home. And she also really wants a place — and this is one of her dealbreakers — that has winter weather as defined by snow. And it's not too difficult for housing. There's no specific activity that she wants access to. But she's interested in making sure that there are a large number of options offered. 

So here we go. I'm going to switch screens here. And this was my issue before, so.

Walkthrough of Beyond the States Database

 So this is the Beyond the State's database. And this is what you see when you sign on to the database. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to do a broad search based on general area of study and budget. I'm going to search it up to 15,000 euros, which is just over 3000 more than her budget, but we don't want to exclude any potentially awesome options, since there might be scholarship opportunities with those. So except for Economics and Law, all of her interests fall under Social Sciences. Programs that include Law or Economics with any of her other interests will be listed under Social Sciences there too. So that's where we're going to start, under General Area of Study. We're leaving everything else blank. So Social Sciences, Budget, and then Search. 

Okay, so we have 206 programs here, many of which would not be a good fit. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to sort by program name. And we're doing that so that when there are programs that aren't interesting to her like American Studies, we can just scroll right past there, and scroll past a big chunk of them as well. It makes it easier and quicker to get through all the programs. 

So remember how I told you combined areas of study under both — you can find it searching both ways. Here's an example, Business Administration and Political Science. So this is not one for Emma, but I do want to point this out. That this is listed because of Political Science. We found it when we searched Social Science. Because of the Business Administration, it's also over here for Business and Economics. So you will find them in both areas. But regardless, Emma doesn't want Business, so we're going to continue scrolling down. You know, she's like, “Oh, nothing's really looking interesting.” And then she sees Developmental Studies, and doesn't quite know what that is. 

So we click on it. So first thing, you read the program description. Does that seem interesting? Well, this one is interdisciplinary. That's one thing we're looking for. Focusing on economics, social and political processes, and they're linked to the development cooperation. As she reads on, this is pretty interesting to her; Sociology, Political Science. So she continues to scroll down and read a bit more. The most important thing that she's looking for — because right now we're just trying to come up with sort of a medium-sized list. We're trying to cut down the 206 options to a more manageable list. 

She's going to come down here to Admissions Criteria. And what she finds out with the admissions criteria is that Sweden requires international students to have their high school diploma when they apply. And they have a deadline of January 15. So it pretty much rules Sweden out as an option for anybody who hasn't done a gap year, or you know, is applying after they've already had some college. So she knows she's not going to add that as a favorite, and goes back to the list. 

So again, we're just going to continue to go down the list here. She sees Economics and Social Science. She reads about that. Not sure if Milan has winter weather, but she can figure that one out later. And so, she added that as a favorite. Again, this does not mean ones she's committing to. It means ones that she's going to find more information out about in the second stage of this process. 

It's not too overwhelming. She could go through these 200 programs easily in two hours. I would give two hours to go through 200 programs, because you don't have this kind of frame of reference that I do when looking at these schools. But as you go through the things that you learn, she knows, because of what she learned for Sweden, when she sees another school in Sweden — there's one in Malmo around here somewhere — she knows, oh, I don't even need to click on that one. Here we are, European Studies. She knows she doesn't even need to click on that one because it's in Sweden. So that's helpful. Or there's this Global and Developmental Studies program that she might look at because she liked the Developmental Studies description at Loons. But she clicks on this and she realizes that the timeline of the application and entrance exams at the school is not a good fit for her. So she knows that not only for this one program that she just looked at, but as she sees other programs offered by the school further on the list, no need to click on them. 

So this is her process through the 200 pages. When she gets to International Relations, my suggestion is bypass all of those, because there are options that combine more than one interest. No need to read any, you know, singular international relations, no need to read any singular political science. 

Let's find ones that merge more than one interest. So at the end of that process, what she has is a list like this. 

Slide 4: Emma’s List

Okay. So what she's going to do with that list from the database is she's going to provide her own list. And she is going to write down the program name, the location, the university name, the tuition, and the admissions requirements. And the reason we're doing this, it's really important, since she does not have all four APS right now, we want to have some schools that don't require the APs. You know, so she has a safety school. If, you know, something ends up happening with her APs this year — if she has, you know, some horrible teacher or a big arguement with a friend the morning of the test that throws her for a loop . So those things happen, life happens. Let's have some programs that don't require APs just to play things safe. 

So she has a very manageable list here. First thing she's going to do is look at factors that are easy to find out to see if they would rule the school out. For instance, you know, when we looked at the school in Milan, she didn't know about the weather in Milan. Snow is one of her dealbreakers. Would it be one of mine? No, but it's one of hers. So that's cool. It's fine. She does a quick Google search. And she finds out it does not snow in Milan, it only snows seven days a year. That's not enough for her, she rules it out. 

She finds out that Groningen is two-and-a-half hours from the major international airport, which she feels like would hinder her ability, or make it harder to get home. And so, she ruled that one out as well. She finds out that that program in Brussels, it's a new program. And that makes her a little bit nervous. And she wasn't totally enthusiastic about it. So she rules that one out. And she finds out that Roskilde is notorious for having housing difficulties. So those are off. 

And now we have this list of six that we're really, really going to investigate and explore thoroughly. So the first thing she'll do is she's going to search the blogs on our main website. Not the database, the main website. I know off the top of my head that we’ve written stuff about Erasmus University Rotterdam, about Leiden, about Tallinn University of Technology. But I also know that a number of these schools, we've had members visit. So it would be a good thing to get on to the member Facebook group and say, “Hey, has anybody visited such and such a school, and what did you think?” 

For places that are unfamiliar, maybe she's not sure about what Riga’s like, she can look at YouTube. That often has a lot of information. My guilty pleasure is House Hunters International. I love that you can kind of see how people live. The people on it, they choose what always make me crazy. But I do like getting kind of a picture of what it looks like to live in different cities. You can go to Nomad List, like we talked about before. Sometimes schools have a virtual experience day. But the first thing you're going to want to do is really dig into the websites of the schools. And I want to show you an example of that.

Tilburg University Website Walkthrough

So this is Tilburg University. One of the schools on her list is at Tilburg. So it's very clear, we go to the home site. And it's clear. You know, we want to look at bachelor's programs, we click there. We go down to this program she was interested in. And this is just a wealth of information all right here. They talk about what the program aims are and what you learn, what you can do afterwards. There's a campus tour. There are student testimonials here. Video. And then, what I think is really cool is this right here. And you're going to find this for the websites — most of the websites in the Netherlands, most of actually Northern Europe. 

And remember how I said if you have no idea what you want to study, first start just looking at the websites for the Netherlands? This is why. This gives you a really good idea of what you're going to study each year. Not only sort of, you know, a little blurb about it. But look at this. We have a list of every course first year students take with descriptions of the course, because who knows what Wicked Problems 101 is. Not only does it tell you what Wicked Problems 101 is, but it also tells you about seminars, and lectures, and what the assignments are, the examination schedule. 

So this right here tells you this is not going to be a class where your entire grade is based on one assignment or test, which is pretty cool. It tells you about the lectures. I mean, just an abundance of information. And again, this information might tell you — you might read this and be like, “Oh, that does not sound interesting at all.” But at least you know that, and you know what you base that decision on. 

University of Latvia Website Walkthrough

Then we have the University of Latvia. I think that it has a lot to offer, but its website is not one of those things it has to offer. So when we get to the homepage and kind of, oh, I guess international students, okay. Degree studies, which is not easy to do. Study programs. And so, here's our list that it provides us. So I think it was this one that we were looking at. And look at this, this is all it says. This is all you got, guys. So just the contrast between this and the Tilburg site is huge. 

Now, we talked about before red flags. We talked about red flags in Lesson Two. This is a little bit of a red flag. But it's not enough of a reason to cross it off the list yet. What I suggest doing is you send this guy right here, Juris. You send him an email and you say, “Hey, I'm interested in you know, such and such a program. And I was hoping you could send me the following information.” And then you request specific information. That stuff you saw on the Tilburg site, the stuff that either made you say, “Yes, I want to apply here,” or the stuff that made you say, “No, I do not want to apply here,” you want to ask for all that information from this school. If they answer you and provide the information, that's great. If you don't get an answer, or have to follow up a few times, that's more of a red flag. And that would be a reason to say, “Hey, maybe they don't, you know, provide the communication that would be needed.” 

The other thing I'll say is that this is great, because it gives you the email of the director right here. Sometimes you're not going to find that, and you're going to have to dig around a lot on the site. And you still might only come up with the, you know, info@latviauniversity sort of a email address. So in that case, you don't really know who you're emailing. Here, we know this guy is the director of this English-taught program. So we know that he speaks English. The person who's receiving the email for [email protected], we don't know about their English-speaking skills. So what I generally do in that case is I’ll use Google Translate, and put the message in Latvian underneath the English email that I send. And you always want to ask, especially in that situation, “Please let me know who I should contact if you're not the appropriate person,” especially if it's to, you know, the info, the general email site that we were talking about. So that's sort of how we do it. That's how we go through this, that's how we develop these lists for people.

Slide 5: Emma’s List

Let's see. So even if all six are still on the list going into her senior year, she still has two that she's definitely going to get into. Because you see here, the school in Rotterdam, there are no APs, and there's not an enrollment cap. So she's going to get in there for sure. What's the other one that she would definitely get into? So she'll know. After her junior year, she'll know if she has the three APs. If she passes the APs her junior year, she'll know that she would get into the one at Leiden. Latvia and Tallinn, it's like 95% sure that based on her qualifications, she would get in. They don't have as much of that like concrete policy of you meet the requirements and you get in, but it is an informal policy. 

And then, we would just have the two schools that require the four APs that would provide a provisional acceptance based on her obtaining that fourth AP. She can still apply even though she won't have the four APs in hand. It would just be a provisional acceptance, and she would have to show that at the end. But honestly, that stresses me out a lot. I know a lot of students who have done it. But I think it's good to apply to a couple that you will get into, or one that you will get into so that at least you have that as a plan moving forward as well. 

Slide 6: It’s time to create your own shortlist

So that wraps up how to choose what schools to apply to. I hope you've enjoyed it and you're excited about the options. If you completed the action steps and followed along with this walkthrough, you should have your own shortlist of programs to explore. So great work. Feel free to bring any questions you might have to the Member Q&A or Office Hours, and I look forward to working with you in future courses. Thanks.