Education Blog

College is something that requires a great investment of time and money. It is for this reason that the decision on which college to attend is one that should never be taken lightly. When weighing up one’s options for college, more than just academic considerations should to be taken into account. Factors such as location and climate, costs, and student body makeup are also important when choosing a college. Mind Mapping is one tool that can prove incredibly useful for deciding among various college options; with Mind Maps, one can literally “map out” all of the relevant information one needs to consider when making his or her choice in one, spatially formatted diagram using colors, pictures, or other graphics as desired. Organizing information in this manner has been shown to allow the brain to process and recall the information more naturally, as well as allow one to work with the information more efficiently. Therefore, Mind Mapping offers those concerned with choosing the right college a creative and effective way to select the school that will make them the happiest.

Using Mind Mapping to Choose a College

A high school senior has been accepted to 6 of the colleges to which he applied. With the deadline for accepting the various admissions offers looming, he knows that he needs to sort through his choices and select the college that is right for him. Using a Mind Mapping software tool, the student begins constructing a Mind Map to compare his options by, first, representing the purpose of the map, choosing a college, in the map’s center. He then adds branches to the map, on which he lists the names of the colleges who have offered him a spot in their upcoming freshman class. On child branches that are attached to the branches, he next lists all of the relevant information he wants to consider about each school, such as majors offered and tuition assistance available. Throughout his Mind Map, the student uses colors, pictures, and other graphics to make his map more visual and his choices easier to conceptualize. When he has completed his map, it looks similar to the attached Mind Map diagram.

A Great First Semester at College Thanks to Mind Mapping

At the end of his first semester, the student returns home from college for winter break having enjoyed his time at school so far. Thinking back to the previous spring, he remembered how he arrived at his decision to attend his school using his Mind Map. He recalls the ease he had in comparing the various options for schools and the relevant factors of each because all of this information was clearly “mapped out” in one diagram. His college roommate, in contrast, recounted the great difficulty he had in making his decision concerning a college, having spent many hours flipping back and forth among college brochures to reach a choice. The roommate now wishes he had used Mind Mapping to make his selection, as he is still unsure if he made the right choice. The student doesn’t have to question whether or not he made the right choice — he knows he did, and his Mind Map helped in do it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 12:05 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.