College Searching: Where Do You Start?
The fall part of the semester for seniors can be a pressure pot. You have your school load, your personal life, and college stuff. College stuff like: What schools should I be looking at? When are the applications due? Do I need an entrance essay and what should I write about? What are my chances of being accepted at my top choices? How much are they going to cost? Where will my family get the money?
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If you aren’t a senior yet, see what you have to look forward to?!
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So, I would suggest you think about this stuff earlier, a lot earlier, say as a sophomore. If you lay the groundwork for all these decisions, as a senior, the basic thing you will need to do is just the application process; the decisions will have been made.
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So what is the process?
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Well, I would first start with figuring out what you might like to do as a career. That is one of the most fulfilling and cost effective things to do. The stats say that some 60% of the students that have a general ideal as to a career path stay in the major they start and have a good chance of graduating in 4 to 5 years. For those who have no clue, some 90% change majors at least once in during their college career. Not a very good set up. It takes longer to graduate, costs more money, delays starting out your career and the experience you would get, class credits don’t transfer, etc. Did I mention it costs more money? Yea, I did but you need to hear it again. That stuff, money I mean, don’t grow on trees.
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Action Time!
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So what’s a kid to do?
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A first item of business is to take some kind of personality-values-skills test. There are a number of options available. Talk to your guidance counselor as to what your school offers. Often, schools have a platform that allows their students to take a career guidance test. Naviance is probably the best-known platform that many schools offer.
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Some other public sites are:
Checkoutacollege.com
Education.com
Educationplanner.org
Yourfreecareertest.com
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These tests take 15 to 30 minutes to take and will generate a broad spectrum of results. Before you take one, check out their privacy policy and how they will communicate with you after you take the survey. Last thing you want is a bunch of unwanted emails from now until….
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Having taken the survey, print out the results, and then put each career on a card. Next, make up 5 more cards. They are: Won’t ever find me there; I might do that but maybe not; getting warmer; very interesting; I would do that even if they didn’t pay me!
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If you are really into this, take two different surveys from two different sites, put the results on separate cards and do separate sorts. Now, see what groups of occupations consistently fit in the “I would do that even if they didn’t pay me” category again and again.
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Got the picture?
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The ones in this group are probably something you should look into further! Give it a try. By the way, this is the first part of the process I help students work through before they even think about looking at any colleges. If that makes sense, you will probably be pleased with the rest of what we do. I would look forward to hearing from you.
Come over to our website specifically designed for college preparation.
www.lifeprepcollegeplanning.com
To Jump Starting Your College Life!
Coach Rossitto
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The opinions voiced in this material are for general information and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.
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