My 16-year-old son has a piece of paper, thumbtacked to his bedroom wall: a list of about 30 colleges and universities, carefully ordered alongside checkmarks and crosshatches. Upon first glance, the list wouldn’t make much sense to anyone, but perhaps another teenager. The way in which he has grouped colleges together is based on three things: campus aesthetics, geographic factors (you better believe “sunny at least 300 days of the year” is on the list of criteria for this Colorado kid), and athletic prowess.
