In the United States, there are more than 5,600 options for higher education.

A college-bound student can attend Texas A&M-Kingsville to study master ranching, Carnegie Mellon to major in bagpipe music or Mississippi State for retail floristry or sports turf management. There’s the Gupton-Jones College in Atlanta which is one of the nation’s foremost educators of future funeral service personnel. And there are dozens of tribal and Native American colleges to choose from.

Two-year or four-year. Private or public. Liberal arts or religious. Research or vocational. The choices, quite simply, seem endless.

But for Mankato Loyola students, the process of choosing a college just got a whole lot easier — and a whole lot more comprehensive.

“The challenge is not only how to afford the schooling,” said Dayle Moore, who heads the information systems department for Nicollet County and has several children nearing college age, “but also how to search out and research all the options.”

Moore is among a team of school counselors and software developers who created Opt2Xplore, a web-based college search tool. The software will be used at Mankato Loyola in the 2008-09 school year on a trial basis, thanks to Mark and Michelle Brielmaier who donated the first year’s licensing fee.

For complete story, see the Sunday, June 8, 2008, print edition of The Free Press or sign onto our e-edition.

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