I sketched a few ideas, which hopefully you can see in the image to the left.
For distinguishing which list a college is on, I was thinking of just doing color-coding of whatever symbol/icon I choose.
While I don't have any animation or sound, I was thinking that I would introduce each icon as the user chooses it (or whatever) with some animation, something more than just having the item appear there.
I'll keep thinking about it this weekend, I'd like to come up with something a little more interesting than these...
