My prototype/concept of college would be a college that is of high rank in both general and also in computer science/programming education. The prototype is also a college with all the needed facilities for furthering my interest of computer science and engineering. It also includes a college that I can get into straight out of high school without a gap year. Basing my search on my prototype of college, I would be looking for an Ivy league school or a really good school in America that is good for computer science. This differs from other people because they might have a prototype of college as a college with a good medical program for medicine.
I used heuristics to find out the college that I would consider going/applying to. Heuristics in this scenario would be used to judge colleges based on their facilities. Using algorithms would be too much work to use for a college because there are numerous colleges that I could go to and ruling them out would be tedious. Instead, using heuristics would be a better method for finding a college because I could take in considerations like what the colleges are best known for and what career they best fit. Using heuristics, I could also limit the search to close by or far away schools.
There would be many obstacles to problem solving in the application process including fixation. When we apply to colleges, there are a few which we really want to go to. We would be fixated only on these colleges. If we get rejected from our desired colleges, we may take it badly and think there is no other solution to college and may believe in the worst. Instead of looking from a fresh perspective, like looking at other colleges or other paths, we get very discouraged and not know how to solve the problem.
Representative heuristics would be used in this process to judge what colleges are of high rank. I would use this method in finding the right colleges for me by seeing if the conditions of the university are met with my prototype of College. For example, Stanford and MIT would be a good fit for this prototype because it is one of the top ten colleges in the United States. Also, UCLA would be a good fit because even though it is not an Ivy league school it is a really good school for computer science/programming. Also they have a very successful computer science program which is one of my conditions for the prototype.
Availability heuristic would play a role in my college search because of my memory of different scenarios involving college applications. If I remember a friend of mine getting into a good college with the same gpa and sat score as me, and it is available in my memory, then I would think that I can get into the same college. If a college website such as naviance tells me that I need a certain gpa for a college and that is available in my mind then I would think that I would get in if my gpa is higher than that Gpa. Whatever memory I have of a person getting into a college with their statistics, I would believe that I can get into a college with those statistics.
Confirmation Bias would play a role in the search for a college because we would only consider requirements that we have met while not considering ones we haven’t met. Before we search for the requirements like SAT and GPA for a college like UCLA, we would believe that we can easily get into a certain college with only one of the met requirements. In many cases one of those might be high like GPA and one might be low like SAT. We would only focus on the requirements we have met and we would be confident that we can easily get in because we have achieved that requirement, even though we haven’t met the other one.
Overconfidence has a major role in applying for a desired college. When we apply to a college with higher than average statistics needed for that college we greatly believe that we will be accepted because we are overconfident. However, we might be more confident than correct, because colleges could still reject us based on other aspects of our lives. We only apply to colleges if we believe we can get in. We wouldn’t apply to a college if there is no chance of getting in.
Belief perseverance would also play a role in the application process because some of our dream colleges are out of our reach and even though our belief that we can get in to that college is opposed by statistics, we still believe and hope that we will get in. We might first believe that the required Sat score and Gpa for a college is average for us to get into that college. But when we look on a college website, we might find out that the Required Gpa and Sat score is much higher than our Gpa and sat score respectively. Despite this, however, we might still believe that we can get into the college.
Yes I did make compromises in choosing colleges. I had to choose a college that was nearby to California and my house. I also needed to choose a college that didn’t have too high of tuition rates to go to. The college I would have to choose should have had Gpa and SAT requirements that were suitable for me. The college also should be a good college for my desired career path which is computer programming/science.
