Well, when deciding what college you want to attend, first you should determine how far away you want to travel. Do you want to go to a state school? Furthermore, do you only want to attend a public state school, or are you willing to pay for and attend a private school? Public state universities would be your cheapest bet. Since you've got questions about scholarships, I'm guessing tuition cost is a factor.
So after you decide what type of school/where you want to attend, you could start looking more closely at the majors offered at each school's website, see how the curriculum sounds to you, and if it sounds like somewhere you'd want to go. There's always the option of touring schools, especially if their within the state/driving distance.
Now to answer some other questions: For my state, yes, a certain number of community service hours were required to receive state scholarships. Community service always looks nice for scholarships and can even help get you into certain schools, I believe. Extra curricular activities, service, good grades, all of these are deciding factors for college admittance.
For me, since college applications do cost to fill out, and only 2 state schools had the major I wanted, I just simply applied to those two schools. Like I've said, I don't think there's a cure-all search engine for colleges, you should decide what you need, what you want to study, and then research the schools individually from there. You may not want to hear this, but not too many friends from my high school class came to the college I chose. My first week was quite lonely and depressing. However, I quickly made friends with some people on my dorm floor and things were looking up since. If you have a shell, college will break it. The people make the experience.
Well, when deciding what college you want to attend, first you should determine how far away you want to travel. Do you want to go to a state school? Furthermore, do you only want to attend a public state school, or are you willing to pay for and attend a private school? Public state universities would be your cheapest bet. Since you've got questions about scholarships, I'm guessing tuition cost is a factor.
So after you decide what type of school/where you want to attend, you could start looking more closely at the majors offered at each school's website, see how the curriculum sounds to you, and if it sounds like somewhere you'd want to go. There's always the option of touring schools, especially if their within the state/driving distance.
Now to answer some other questions: For my state, yes, a certain number of community service hours were required to receive state scholarships. Community service always looks nice for scholarships and can even help get you into certain schools, I believe. Extra curricular activities, service, good grades, all of these are deciding factors for college admittance.
For me, since college applications do cost to fill out, and only 2 state schools had the major I wanted, I just simply applied to those two schools. Like I've said, I don't think there's a cure-all search engine for colleges, you should decide what you need, what you want to study, and then research the schools individually from there. You may not want to hear this, but not too many friends from my high school class came to the college I chose. My first week was quite lonely and depressing. However, I quickly made friends with some people on my dorm floor and things were looking up since. If you have a shell, college will break it. The people make the experience.