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To call my college search disorganized would be an understatement. I had no idea where I wanted to go. I vaguely understood that out-of-state tuition was more expensive, so I decided to look only in my home state. Unfortunately, that didn’t narrow things down much.

The University of Texas lists 45 colleges and universities in my state. I requested information from at least 30 of them. Every day our mailbox was full. I got letters from admissions departments, course catalogues, and brochures with photographs of dorm rooms and football stadiums. For a two-month period, my family refused to bring the mail in. The postman even shot glares at our house while he filled the mailbox.

If I had to lug that stuff through our neighborhood, I would have hated me too.

The thing, is I didn’t need to request information from all of these places. Had I spent a little more time at the beginning figuring out what I wanted, I would have ruled half of those schools out.

I wanted to move away from home. That meant any schools within an hour drive could have been crossed off the list. I knew I wanted to major or minor in creative writing. A lot of schools don’t offer that. I wanted a medium to large university, so the materials from the tiny liberal arts colleges were wasted on me.

There are thousands of schools out there. If you try to look at all of them, you’ll still be visiting colleges when your friends are graduating with Master’s degrees. Before you start lining up campus visits and requesting packets of information, take the time to figure out what you really want from your college experience. Are you looking for a large student body? Will you need to live at home while you attend school? Do you want a school with a marching band and an awesome art program?

The school you’re looking for is out there. Just remember, there’s a lot you can do to make it easier to find.