Take a look at the list of items below and see if you can spot the pat­tern: (FYI, this is not a pilot test for a future BG-style SAT exam !)

• Loca­tion
• Aver­age class size
• Per­cent­age of stu­dents who grad­u­ate in four years
• Con­sor­tium membership
• Avail­able majors
• Finan­cial Aid

If you have not fig­ured out the pat­tern by now, these are all cri­te­ria that most fam­i­lies and stu­dents use to eval­u­ate col­leges. How­ever, there's one that should have stood out, or at least made you think twice as to why its was included. Still stumped? (hint: it's the fourth one on the list).

What's a con­sor­tium, you ask? Sim­ply put, a con­sor­tium con­sists of a few col­leges who all hap­pen to be within a stones throw from one another (and some­times who have agreed to col­lab­o­rate, and share resources. In more tech­ni­cal terms, as stated in the Boston Consortium's mis­sion statement:

The mis­sion of The Boston Con­sor­tium for Higher Edu­ca­tion is to act as an exter­nal resource in cre­at­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment among mem­ber insti­tu­tions for the devel­op­ment and prac­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tion of cost sav­ing and qual­ity improve­ment ideas. A pri­mary method for achiev­ing these ends will be the uti­liza­tion of learn­ing orga­ni­za­tion and other man­age­ment tools to develop the skills nec­es­sary for our man­agers to work in an envi­ron­ment of rapid change.

There's a lot to love about the con­sor­tium con­cept. First, and some­what obvi­ous, stu­dents who attend consortium-member schools have an oppor­tu­nity to take classes that may not be avail­able at their cur­rent school. Using the Boston Con­sor­tium as exam­ple, a stu­dent at Welles­ley could take classes at MIT or any of the other Boston area mem­ber schools, and apply the course credit toward the com­ple­tion of her degree. So if you are a Welles­ley stu­dent who always loved play­ing with toys as a child, you could enroll in MIT's Toy Design class, earn course credit for your grad­u­a­tion require­ments at Welles­ley, at receive a dapper-looking lab coat!

Sec­ond, con­sor­tium agree­ments allow stu­dents to meet, inter­act, and work with stu­dents out­side of their cur­rent schools. Talk about an easy way to expand your social scene or your crav­ing for more intel­lec­tual diversity.

And it gets bet­ter. The Boston Con­sor­tium is not the only one of its kind. There's the Clare­mont Col­leges, The Asso­ci­ated Col­leges of the South, and the clas­sic Five Col­lege Con­sor­tium, just to name a few.

So, when re-visiting those col­leges who made the cut, be sure to ask your tour guide if that school is a mem­ber of a con­sor­tium. Besides, how many other oppor­tu­ni­ties will you have to take courses out­side of your own school with­out hav­ing to transfer?