Since the 1950s, NEBHE has published comprehensive directories of New England colleges and universities. The directory—first called Facts and printed as a special issue of The New England Journal of Higher Education—became a go-to-source for people seeking important information about the region’s higher education institutions. NEBHE’s directory was last printed in 2009, shortly before the journal went entirely online. This year, NEBHE worked with Boston magazine to publish the 2012 Guide to New England Colleges & Universities, which was printed as a supplement to the December 2011 issue of the magazine. This article was cross-posted as part of the guide.

Explore the college listings and you’ll get a taste of New England’s smorgasbord of postsecondary institutions. Not just the world-famous Harvards and Yales, but unsung
institutions like the Bar Harbor, Maine–based College of the Atlantic, with its single degree in Human Ecology; the Newton, Massachusetts–based New England School
of Acupuncture, with its master’s degrees in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine; and
the New Haven, Connecticut–based Gateway Community College, with its associate in Aviation Maintenance Technology.

You’ll also see the long way women have come since the 1950s, when females represented
just 35% of college students. They are now the majority at most colleges.

You’ll see the relatively low percentage of minorities at most New England campuses, though their numbers have grown as New England’s demography overall has become more diverse.

You’ll be tempted to play with the math in the listings, calculating the share of applicants
who are admitted and the share of admitted applicants who enroll. But that’s tricky. Some colleges attract applicants based on outsized reputations reinforced by the ranking systems sprouting up everywhere. Some attract fewer applicants because their images suggest they’re impossible to get into or, conversely, somehow subpar.

You might look at the student-to-faculty ratios and buy the conventional wisdom that the lower it is, the more likely you’ll get to know the professor. (That’s if there is a professor. You may be taught by a graduate teaching assistant or by a smart phone.) Also be advised: Some of the best inspiration comes in a 200-seat lecture hall in a university that is more like a vibrant city than an ivy-covered village.

Because New England is saturated with topnotch colleges, you might consider a consortium of star players. The University of Massachusetts Amherst, along with Mount Holyoke, Smith, Amherst, and Hampshire colleges, form the Five College Consortium, an innovative arrangement allowing students at the five institutions to share everything from local shuttle bus services to cross-registration.

Some NE campuses are among the world’s most prestigious. Some are focused like
lasers on job skills. Some are leaders in LGBTQA. Some are buttoned-up, straight
as arrows. Some colleges are even beyond the purview of this Guide—like the unaccredited Corvid College, which offers classes in Boston-area bookstores on everything from cyberpunk to authoritarianism vs. anarchism in Lord of the Rings.

Interest in categorizing, grading, and rating U.S. colleges has been surging in the past 20 years or so for two main reasons.

First, policy leaders feel pressure to protect “student-consumers” and their families from
the double whammy of sky-high college costs and shrinking student aid. They also want colleges to be more “transparent” about what they provide students for the money.

Second, the explosion in college rankings means everybody from college trustees to
parents of high school students is obsessed with an institution’s latest ranking: Is Old
Ivy really the “third-best liberal arts college in the Northeast”? And how is that different
from the “second-best” ranking that State U captured one year earlier?

Many are skeptical of the oversimplification of college cost and accountability, and cynical about the perverse incentives encouraged by the rankings. So much so that much college marketing today focuses on curb appeal—extras like climbing walls and fancy dorms.

As the late University of Maine System Chancellor and New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) chair Robert L. Woodbury argued, U.S. News & World Report’s popular college ratings issue encourages colleges to produce an application deluge, reject as many students as possible, avoid nontraditional students, and favor quick fixes over long-term improvement.

Among other tips
Some experts suggest applying to three tiers of colleges: 1) so-called “reaches,” 2) high-quality middle-tier institutions, and 3) what were once thought of as “safety” schools.

Many suggest visiting colleges as often as you can to see what characteristics appeal or don’t appeal to you. Consider traits like ratio of women to men, student diversity, and religious affiliation.

Look for opportunities to study abroad and to get a taste of the highs and lows of work through internships. Maybe do both at once through programs such as Engineers Without Borders, in which students build water-distribution systems in undeveloped countries.

High hopes
In The Princeton Review’s most recent “College Hopes & Worries Survey,” more than two-thirds of college applicants and parents of applicants reported their stress levels were “high” or “very high” due to college application pressures.

The survey also found the most looked-at statistic when researching a college was average SAT scores. Yet many colleges have stopped requiring applicants to submit the scores, judging the tests to be unimaginative, too stressful, and even biased against certain groups.

The biggest worry students and parents cited  was that a student would get into a first choice college, but not be able to afford it.

Location, location, location!
As for ideal distance from home, 50% of parents answering the Princeton Review survey indicated “0 to 250 miles,” while 66% of students selected ranges over 250 miles.

More than 40% of respondents to The Princeton Review survey said the main benefit of a college degree was “a potentially better job and income.” (Never mind the sheer joy of learning.)

Former Connecticut commissioner of higher education and NEBHE chair, Andrew
De Rocco, notes that students who are interested in a field that requires graduate study should seek out an undergraduate program that has a good record of sending its students on to graduate school. If you know what you’re interested in, examine the department in question—for example, via the Internet and journals in the field. Or if you don’t know what field you’re interested in, more power to you. The first job of a college may be to show you the options.

Above all, the college search process should be fun, not a measure of how many public service activities are on your résumé or how many honors courses you took. Don’t get depressed by the pressure of college search, testing, and performance. And remember, there’s not just one college that’s right for everyone.