How I'm actually comparing colleges: a spreadsheet, two phone calls and a visit

Every house has three voices when it comes to college. My uncle says "brand". My mother says "close". The family WhatsApp group says "highest package". My own voice says "can I sleep for a week first". None of these voices has done any homework, so I thought I'd do some.

This is what I'm doing now, in class 12, before results, so that I'm not choosing during counselling at 11 pm with five tabs open and a cousin on speaker.

Step 0: the pass/fail filters

Before any comparison, a college has to pass these. Pass or fail. No points.

• Is the course approved/recognised by the proper regulatory body? (Check on the official regulator's site, not the college's own brochure.)
• Is the degree something I can actually use for what I want to do later, like higher studies or a licence?
• Do I have a rough fee number in writing?

If a college fails any of these, I don't spend another minute. That's a lot of minutes saved.

Step 1: weights

I picked eight things I care about and gave each a weight out of 100. This is mine. Yours should be different, and that's the point. Do it alone, not with relatives in the room.

Criterion	Weight
Total cost (all 4–5 years: fees, hostel, travel, books)	20
Teaching, labs / hospital or practical exposure	20
Outcomes: what do seniors actually do after?	15
Distance and cost to visit home	10
Peers and campus culture	10
Safety and hostel conditions	10
Flexibility (can I try a minor, research, change track?)	10
City cost of living	5
Total	100

Step 2: getting real information

The brochure is a mood board. Real info comes from people.

Talk to three seniors from each college: one who is doing well, one average, one unhappy. The unhappy one is the most useful. I ask them: "what's the worst thing?" and "would you choose this college again?" Most people answer the second one with a pause, and the pause tells me everything.

On placements: nobody has told me anything useful about "highest package". It is one person. I ask: median package, how many students sat for placement, how many got jobs, and what kind of jobs. I'm not inventing numbers for you, I'm just saying the questions. If a college can't or won't answer "how many students sat", I note that down. That's data too.

Phone calls: I made two. One to the admissions office (about fees and what's included), one to the hostel warden (about food, rules, hours). Be polite, ask them to email the answers. A college that replies in writing in two days is already telling you something.

The visit: if you can travel, go on a normal weekday, not a fest day. Eat in the mess. Look at the hostel bathroom. Talk to the guard and the chai guy outside, they know which hostels are rough. I did one visit in the summer break and stood outside a hostel for 20 minutes just watching how people looked. Weird, but useful.

Step 3: the sheet

For each college I scored 1 to 5 on each criterion. Then multiplied by the weights, added up, and divided by 5 so the total is out of 100. Here is a made-up example with three imaginary colleges (A, B, C), just to show how it works:

Criterion (weight)	A	B	C
Cost (20)	3	5	2
Teaching / labs (20)	4	3	4
Outcomes (15)	4	3	3
Distance (10)	2	4	5
Peers (10)	4	3	3
Safety / hostel (10)	3	3	4
Flexibility (10)	4	2	3
City cost (5)	2	4	3
Weighted total (out of 100)	68	69	66

Yes. 68, 69 and 66. I was annoyed too. I wanted the sheet to scream the answer. But that's actually the useful result: when the sheet says it's nearly a tie, then the numbers have nothing more to say, and the decision is about something else. Like which regret I can live with.

Step 4: the gut check

After the sheet I do a thing that sounds stupid. I imagine the winner is announced. And I check my stomach. If I feel relief, great. If I feel a small drop, "ugh, that one?", then there's something I care about that isn't in my table. Maybe I wanted a big city. Maybe I wanted to be near my grandmother. I add it as a criterion, re-score, and see if the sheet agrees with my stomach now.

What I'm still unsure about

• I can't score "will I make friends there". Nobody can.
• Seniors' opinions are one person's four years. Three seniors are still just three.
• I haven't figured out how much weight to give my parents' fear. It's real, and it's not a number.

So that's the spreadsheet. It won't choose for you. It just makes it harder for you to be tricked by the word "brand" or the word "package".