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Professor Jay LeBlanc had already been a close family friend for years now. However, last chapel, I got curious about his involvement with Joyful Noise, Huntington University’s student worship band. So, this past week I asked Jay if I could informally interview him about his experience as head of Joyful Noise.

If campus involvement opportunities and access to extracurricular activities are at the top of your list, you will want to approach the college admissions process with an understanding of what you are already interested in. What would you like to continue doing in college?

The right place for you will align with your core beliefs and provide an environment that will encourage you to grow in your faith. Both doctrine and a personal sense of connection are going to be important.

Even if you aren’t sure what major you will choose, finding a school with the right academic culture can be one of your top priorities. In a school with a healthy academic culture, you will be set up for success regardless of the major you choose.

Your relationship with your alma mater has the potential to be an ongoing relationship that lasts the rest of your life. As you would in other potentially lifelong relationships, you want to determine your compatibility with the schools you are considering.

When geographic location is one of your top priorities, you are likely going to pick a school based on where it is situated. How close (or far) do you want to be from home? Will you do your best work in the heart of a bustling city or in the close-knit community of a college town?

When value and cost are your priorities for your college experience, you want to see the numbers. You want to know: What is the investment — of time, of finances, and of energy — that you will need to make to complete your education? You want to hear the stories of what alumni have done before you.

When community and interconnectedness are your top priorities, you want to find a university that has the right feel. People who value community and interconnectedness often come away from a campus visit saying something like, “When I stepped on campus, I just knew this was the place for me.”

We asked parents who have already been through the college selection process with their high school seniors for tips about the college search process. Here is what they told us.

If you have the traits of a good journalist, I invite you to come and major in journalism at Huntington University. We’ll give you the same training and education we gave Shelly Bradbury, one of our journalism graduates. When in our department, she wrote and edited stories for our campus newspaper — just as students are doing even now online (take a look). After a year of Bradbury’s first stint as a newspaper reporter, she emailed us to say that her “editors seem to agree that writing is one of my strengths, and I've got to guess that's in part because of the classes…where we scrutinized each and every word.” (We make our students true wordsmiths!)