A wise application is a search and application cycle that centers value over prestige. We borrow this concept from the world-changing, investment philosophy of Warren Buffet. Buffet believes investors should pick business not stocks — that is rely on your research of a company’s actual value and not the “hype” of the market in which it is a member. Buffet famously counsels investors that the horizon for an investment is “forever.”

We apply that same philosophy to college choice. At wisecollegechoices.com we want students to select a college not a reputation. The horizon for your college education is the length of your life. We want you to look at exit data associated with your choice not entrance data, which is the primary driver of selectivity and prestige. We want you to find the best school for you (not your classmates) based on a confluence of factors including, primarily the learning environment, commitment to undergraduate education, performance of graduates, happiness of graduates, and commitment to fair funding and fair price.

The operative word on price is “fair” not “cheap’ — its not “bargain college choices.” Our commitment to a wise value centers two key principles for a productive and meaningful search: (1) we want you to build an application list that includes some “buyers”; (2) we want you to conceptualize your academic life on a campus.

Jeffery Selingo explains that “buyers” are schools who must actively recruit an incoming class rather than simply select one. “Buyers” — on average — accept at or less than 20% of their applicants. But this number is misleading as it is based on the ratio of total applications to acceptances. It’s simple math: the more applications a school receives, the greater number they can reject, which creates the false impression that they are more desirable than their perfectly capable counterparts. (This phenomena lead New York Times columnist Frank Bruni to sarcastically quip: “With no one admitted to the class of 2020, Stanford is assured that no other school can match its desirability in the near future.”)

Frank Bruni, who has been for much of his writing career, an expert on college admissions and college attendance has often said: “It’s not where you go [to college] but how you go.” We want you to discover how to go to school. Wisecollegechoices.com wants to guide you to become a consumer of the academic life of your chosen school not a consumer of it’s amenities.

Let’s get started!

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Richard C. Jones
Founder, wisecollegechoices.com