Choosing Your Dream School Now!

A lot of prospective candidates to Nigerian universities, polytechnics and colleges of educations make the mistake of not doing their groundwork to know the institution that offer the best academic services. Though, there are lots of factors that make this difficult, but the author encourages all prospective undergraduates to explore different avenues before making their choices of programs.

Some of the things to consider when making decisions on what course to study are:

· Accreditation. It is very important for you to know if the program you want to undertake is accredited or not. You would not want to be registered for a course that has not been accredited. This may affect negatively your chance of getting a quality education. There is a regulatory body that is responsible for this accreditation.

· Also of importance is the pedigree of the institution offering those academic programs. There are so many institutions offering similar courses, but it is very important to know if these schools (universities, polytechnics, colleges of education) have the facilities e.g. conducive classrooms, libraries, laboratories, hostels, canteens and other functional utilities. Also, it is essential to have an idea of the qualifications of members of the academic staff, their commitment to lecturing etc. Most times, the lecturers in Nigerian public institutions are not very committed to teaching their students.

You can make use of the internet to check out from the list of websites of various Nigerian universities, polytechnics, colleges of education/nursing. You can take advantage of the information to know which school fits your vocation. Employ search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc to find sites that offer the program you want. You can also go to social sites like www.naijapal.com where you can get useful information from discussion forums. There are more that 76 listed universities alone (including private, state and federal) of which about 40 are fully accredited.

Again, you can ask from friends and family. Most of us are products of various Nigerian institutions, and so it is very likely that we have idea or bias about particular institutions.