The Big Questions Every College Applicant Needs to Answer

College for Christians - Introducing Part One

If you’re new to College for Christians, my guide to higher education for Christian high school students and the people who love and advise them, you might want to start with last week’s introduction to the book, which I’m publishing as a weekly serial through mid-2025. Today, I introduce our first set of questions, which will take us into mid-November.

So how do you start the difficult process of choosing a college? Given the paradox of having too much choice, narrowing the field is a common first step. You could focus on a certain category of school in a specific part of the country — like large research universities on the West Coast or small residential colleges in the Northeast. You could zero in on schools whose strengths match your interests.

I put those two factors together when I made my college wish list. Eager to see another part of the country and spend four years studying my favorite subjects, I looked for schools at least a thousand miles away from Minnesota that listed History or Political Science among their five most popular majors.

Maybe you have no idea what you want to study, or where. But you do know that you want to avoid taking out loans. Or maybe you want to save money by living at home, instead of striking off on your own.

Perhaps you just want to choose between your parents’ alma maters. (Or maybe you’re a parent who wants their children to cast their net more broadly.) Or perhaps you’re the first in your family to go to college and don’t know where to begin!

Or, since I’m writing to fellow Christians, it could be that you’re set on choosing a college connected to your particular church, denomination, or tradition.

We’ll eventually discuss all of those considerations and more in Part Two of College for Christians. But I’m going to ask you to set them aside for a moment. Because before you start asking Which college? or How will I choose?, you ought to ask yourself two more fundamental questions: Why do I want to go to college? and When should I go to college?

They’re questions so basic that you may be tempted to skip past them, or simply to repeat the most common answers without thinking too much. But it’s worth pausing to ask Why? and When? before you get to the Which? and How? of choosing a college. For the way you answer these first two questions will shape not only your priorities in the college search, but your experience of whichever college you choose.

In this section:

Ch. 1 - “Why Do I Want to Go to College?”

Ch. 2 - “When Should I Go to College?”