How to Create a Personalized Spreadsheet for College Decisions

Last Updated on January 30, 2026 by Jill Schwitzgebel

Congratulations to your teen on being admitted to multiple colleges!  Your family has made it through the toughest part of the admission experience – probably.   Depending on your teen’s goals and your budget, it’s very possible that they still have a really tough decision to make.

It is time for a new spreadsheet!  The goal with this new one is to help with the decision paralysis that sometimes occurs when comparing all of your final college options.  If you’ve followed me previously, you may recall that I said that one way you could help to support your student’s application process is to put together a spreadsheet for them with all the deadlines and application requirements for the schools to which they planned to apply.  This one is different. This is specifically for when the college decision still isn’t certain after receiving admissions decisions.  (Don’t worry – this happens a lot!)  Maybe you’ve talked more generally about the final college choice, but can’t quite narrow it down.

You can find plenty of spreadsheet templates online, but aside from some of the basics, I believe that this spreadsheet for college decisions is best created for your teen’s own priorities.  In some ways, this will just become a pros and cons list, but with some data.  Here are some ideas of data to include to help you get started.

Getting Started

Some of this may not be applicable to your student and can be disregarded.  And, of course, there may be things that are specific to your situation that you’d like to add.  But here are some ideas to get you started.

• Begin by listing the colleges to which your student was admitted in the first column on the left.
• The next column should include the college’s tuition cost, and the column after that should be room/board.  I suggest that you list those separately, rather than listing just the “total cost of attendance” (COA) because colleges often vary in what they will include in the COA (for instance, some will include travel or books or personal items, which will vary by student).  Beyond that, it can be interesting to see the differences in room and board costs among colleges – you may notice that it’s often affected by the area or region where the college is.  If the college is clear about any mandatory fees, you may want to make that its own column, or you may choose to just go ahead and add it to tuition cost or room/board cost.
• After those columns, list any academic merit money that the college awarded to your student, followed by a column for any other outside financial awards (scholarships).
• And then, finally, add together tuition, fees, room/board, and subtract any financial awards that your student was given.  Now you should have a column with the basic cost for YOUR student to attend.  (Remember, it’s like airplane tickets and everyone is paying a different price!) This can be eye-opening and sometimes eliminate colleges from consideration immediately.
• If the college is not close to home, and your student is likely to incur significant travel costs like for flights, you may wish to add a column with an estimate for what that travel will cost.
• Next, consider listing the major to which your student was admitted, if they applied under different majors at various schools.  Sometimes, this matters to students. If there is a school that is a contender, but they gained entrance into a major that isn’t really of interest now, they need to investigate whether they are likely to be able to switch their major after a semester or two.  (Remember, classes taken that first semester or two are usually applicable to a variety of majors.)  If they are torn between majors, I encourage them to research on the colleges’ website to see what the course requirements are for each major.  Which interests them most?
• Consider listing the college undergraduate population size.
• While still listing data (rather than “vibes”), I recommend including student to faculty ratio.  Sometimes this is enlightening, as well.
• If your student took a considerable number of AP or IB courses, you may want to add a column noting which, if any, of your student’s courses will count for credit.
• If extracurriculars and service are important (for instance, are there musical ensembles available for a non-music major?), include a column about any notable extracurricular or volunteer opportunities at the college.
• Job or grad school placement rate after graduation

More Subjective

And now, let’s get into the more vibes-based columns.  These are going to be the columns that are individual for every student.  My suggestion is that you can color code some of these to help.  For instance, a red cell would be a con, while yellow might be neutral, and a green cell might be a pro.

• I’ll begin by suggesting a column for dorms (and you may wish to add a separate one for dining if food is a big deal, particularly in the case of food allergies).  I have mixed feelings about including dorms as part of decision-making.  At some colleges, students don’t live on campus for more than a year or two, so perhaps dorms are not a big consideration.  In other cases, students have seen only the best dorms on their tours, and they may not be fully representative of where the average first year student lives.  However, if students customarily live on campus for four years, this may matter more, and eventually, they WILL get to live in the best dorms.  I would just say if you include this as a factor, this column should never be a make or break in your decision.
• Internships.  While I’m including this on the more subjective list, I believe it should be on everyone’s spreadsheet.  Research consistently shows that internships really matter for jobs post-graduation. The reason I didn’t include it with the more data-based list is that it can be difficult to understand how well a college does with internship placement. But, some colleges are very intentional about talking about their internship placement – I consider that a green flag.  Even greener if they list the percentage of their students who complete internships and how they support students in getting them.  At many smaller colleges, students can apply for grants that will pay them in the case they get an unpaid internship – so this can be another big perk.  (Although I surely wish that “unpaid internships” were not a thing!) I would consider something like an internship or job fair to be more neutral, rather than green.  While they’re beneficial, they exist at every larger institution and often are very focused on only certain majors – just having one does not mean that a high percentage of students are getting internships.
• Location.  This can mean different things to different students.  If your student won’t have a car on campus, how easy is it for them to get off-campus to get essentials?  If your student likes a certain area of the country, that may matter.  If your student lives far away, how easy is it to get to or from the airport?  Is it important to be accessible to certain cities for internships?
• For many students, opportunities to study abroad are important.  If this is important to your your student, consider things like:  Does the college emphasize study abroad?  Do they at least seem to support it?  Or, do they suggest that studying abroad will make it difficult to graduate in four years?
• How about research opportunities if that is important to your student?  Often, students think about this in STEM majors, but professors in just about every field are engaged in research.  Like internships, it can be a great advantage for a student to have participated in research prior to graduation. At schools without significant graduate student presence on campus, undergraduates are more likely to be able to participate in research.
• Greek life.  Is this important one way or the other?  Some students are looking for it and some wish to avoid it.  Some don’t care so it’s not a factor.  It’s usually easy to google to see what percentage of the population is involved in it.  Score it accordingly.
• Consider including support services available on campus to your spreadsheet.  Is mental health counseling readily available?  How about support and accommodations for students with anxiety or ADHD?  College websites have information available and can provide a clue of just how accessible support services are.
• And finally, vibes.  If your student visited, how did they feel about the student body?  How about the campus itself?  Maybe consider a scale of 1-10 for evaluating this at each college.

Using the Spreadsheet to Make a Final Decision

After you cover all of the categories that matter most to your family, I suggest assigning each category a weight to make a decision matrix.  Cost is commonly the most important.  And in my experience, it’s important to give enough weight to “vibes.” Presumably, your student applied to colleges that already fit your parameters for location, size, and potential for their future.  So if all other things start to seem equal, vibes really can matter.  Some students will thrive just about anywhere, but for others, attending a college that they just did not like for some reason, will really affect their college success.