{"id":"community/journey-counsel","kind":"community","v":1,"title":"Step 4: Counselling & the preference list","line":"The highest-stakes step — and the #2 thing students ask about.","aliases":[],"tags":["topic:journey"],"facts":[{"label":"Essential","value":"Your preference list is the single most important decision of the whole process. Good scores still land in the wrong college when the list is filled casually.","trust":"community","source":0},{"label":"Essential","value":"Build it properly. List every course across your target colleges, tick the ones you'd actually do, then rank most-wanted → least. The algorithm gives you the highest choice you qualify for, so dream …","trust":"community","source":0},{"label":"Essential","value":"Never rank a course you haven't checked the curriculum for. “I'll do any course” is exactly how people end up stuck.","trust":"community","source":0},{"label":"Essential","value":"Upgrades are real. You can start in a lower choice and move up across rounds — don't panic on round one.","trust":"community","source":0}],"data":{"step":4,"id":"counsel","name":"Counselling & the preference list","oneLiner":"The highest-stakes step — and the #2 thing students ask about.","essentials":["Your preference list is the single most important decision of the whole process. Good scores still land in the wrong college when the list is filled casually.","Build it properly. List every course across your target colleges, tick the ones you'd actually do, then rank most-wanted → least. The algorithm gives you the highest choice you qualify for, so dream picks go at the top.","Never rank a course you haven't checked the curriculum for. “I'll do any course” is exactly how people end up stuck.","Upgrades are real. You can start in a lower choice and move up across rounds — don't panic on round one."]},"links":[],"sources":[{"label":"Campus Binge journey essentials (written from the student-voices corpus)","asOf":"2026-07-23","trust":"community","method":"derived"}],"trust":"community","origin":"dataset","asOf":"2026-07-23","digest":"sha256:cd10e0557ef2119b0b5179822679d9c38c1438d91b5857bf21da07c612747ee8"}