Need a brain to bounce some Mysql/DB thoughts off of!!

Hi guys. Architecting an app that's going to have users interacting with different levels of the db/tbls, and trying to figure out a few things. The highlevel layout looks like: collegeTBL deptTBL with ->collegeTBL.id = deptTBL.colID I also have a status tbl for each collegeTBL/deptTBL college_statusTBL userID collegeID dept_statusTBL userID deptID with: collegeTBL.id=college_statusTBL.collegeID deptTBL.id=dept_statusTBL.deptID So I limk the statusTBLs to the college/dept TBLs... This is due to the fact that a user can elect to work on either a college, or a given dept of the college. I'm struggling with a good/best way to figure out how to develop a query to determine what level of a college, (if any) a user has elected to work with. I can do a multiple join across the collegeTBL/deptTBL, and the statusTBLs, but this simply gets a large tbl, and I'd have to then parse the results... I'm trying to figure out if there's a better way, with a single query. The query would look at the college(status), and then at the dept(status) to determine what level (if any ) the user has selected. I've got a mysql layout of the various tbls, and inserts if anyone's interested in helping me shake my mind out on this... thanks -bruce