there are three factors to consider when choose the college:

* Understand yourself: you must first have a honest evaluation of yourself. what is your strength, your weakness, your ability and the area that you will be most likely successful. What are your interests? You must compromise your interests to your ability in order to be successful. As a young people, your interests will change easily but your ability, your personality, strength and weakness are relatively constant.

* Evaluate the colleges: how is the overall reputation of the college, the strength of the program you are interested in. Please keep in mind that your major could change a couple of times during your four years of study. It is best for you to choose a college with overall quality of excellence. In the US, most students are used to the small school. As a matter of fact, the large universities often have more resources, better professors and more programs for you to choose. There is one lesson that no one will tell you: some schools have more strict grade distributions than others. That means, you can get GPA of A in College A and GPA of B in another college with similar reputation. If you plan to go to medical schools or professional schools, you can not go to one college with low GPA distribution!

* Location of Colleges: you often hear that you need to visit the colleges. This does not only mean to meet the people and see the college. You have to understand the environment. This will be critical for your future career after you graduation. For instance, if your future career is in finance area, it is best to go to schools in New York city such as Columbia. If you are willing to learn computer science, Stanford, or University of California are the colleges you want to go.