Obviously, with all of the requirements that must be met for a successful college experience, one cannot be too selective in deciding upon the college they will attend. Each college has its own unique style, as well as academic focus and extracurricular involvement; no two colleges are the same, though many colleges offer the same opportunities. Selecting a college is one part merit and one part personal preference, but with such a variety of choices, how would one whittle down their choices to the colleges that are surely right for them? In this essay, I will explore several different criteria for selecting a college, including difficulty of admission, main academic focus and presence of desirable programs, campus life, extracurricular activities, affiliation, and student body. The colleges I plan 
to examine for these criteria are Clemson University, Furman University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Boston College, Notre Dame College, and Stanford University.
	The first criterion to be examined is difficulty of admission. This facet of a school can tell a good bit about its academics right off the bat. For example, the more rigorous admissions are, the harder the programs are likely to be. To start off, the admission rate of Clemson University is about 85%. This means that 85% of all applicants are accepted, though not all attend. This shows that Clemson is not necessarily the toughest school to get into, though it has been trying to make its admissions more rigorous in past years. Furman University, a private college in South Carolina, has an admission rate of about 60%, which places it much higher on the scale of difficulty. It speaks for the academic programs at Furman that it has such a low acceptance rate, though some believe that private schools have more difficult admissions than public schools. UNC has the same rate of acceptance as Furman, about 60%. However, UNC has much more to offer academically than Furman does, and I can attribute its difficult admissions to its academic programs. Boston College has an acceptance rate of about 60%, and, like Furman, it is a private school. However, like UNC, it also has terrific academic programs, and I believe that embodies the best of both of these previous schools. Notre Dame accepts about 85% of its students, like Clemson. I believe that these two schools have such similar acceptance rates because of their similar academic structure. Notre Dame 
has a few good programs, as well as some that are not as appealing. Of all of the colleges mentioned here, Stanford has the most difficult admissions, accepting a mere 30% of all 
applicants. To put that into perspective, Stanford received more than 25,000 applications this year, and only 2,400 were accepted. That is less than a tenth of all applicants. Obviously, Stanford has the most rigorous admissions by far, which speaks to its superb academic programs.
	Once one has been accepted into college, the next thing to consider is the academic programs offered there. 