Other Resources for University Data

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For all the quadrants above, the best way to get qualitative data is to reach out to your seniors and friends who’ve taken this path already. While reaching out to these individuals, always be respectful of their time. Rather than sending a LinkedIn invite and asking for a 30-minute phone call out of the blue, create a Google Doc with the list of questions you want to ask them and send over the link after they agree to help you out. This way, you get your questions answered at a time of their convenience without going through the hassle of scheduling a call (not to mention the ordeal of different time zones).

Because you want to be a satisficer, talk to no more than two current or past students per university at this point.

Another less personal but more time-saving option is to comb through answers on Quora* and Reddit,* which have dedicated spaces for past students to write about their experiences.

We totally get it. Collecting all of these resources sounds like too much of a hassle to apply to universities. You’re thinking, can I not just apply to the top ten universities from QS Rankings for my major? But remember, we want you to be a satisficer right now. We don’t expect you to go through every course description in detail and look at all alumni from a university.

All the resources should be used as a way to eliminate universities rather than select them.

Let’s switch back to the example of buying a house. In the beginning, you don’t go through every single listing on Zillow in detail and note down the features. Rather, you’re simply browsing through dozens of listings to eliminate the ones that don’t meet your minimum requirements. Which means you first need to create your set of minimum requirements. For a house, that might be the following: I’m looking for all options that are under the budget of $500,000, have two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and accept a down payment of 15%.

We humans have gotten really good at making decisions as we evolved. Rather than looking at every single factor and optimizing for the best possible outcome, we opt for an approach that only looks at the few factors we deem to be important, and then attach appropriate weight to them. Let’s do the same for narrowing down universities.