Preparing for Your First Year at College in Pursuit of Your Future Career Path

Now that it’s the end of April and most college-bound high school seniors know where they’re going next year, it’s a good time to start planning for what you’re going to do once you reach the campus.

Of course you’re going to register for and attend classes, check out the parties, find the best places for off-campus food, maybe even meet with your college course advisor. Yet what are you going to do about working on your path through life?

Now don’t groan. I know you’ve just finished the hassle of applying to colleges and you deserve some downtime. Yet if you do a little pre-planning before you arrive on campus, your next four years and beyond in the job market could be easier.

First, have you updated by email everyone who helped you in your college application process, especially people outside your school who wrote recommendation letters for you? These people would probably like to know where you’ll be going next year. And in the case where it’s to a school to which they wrote a recommendation letter, be sure to thank them for their part in your acceptance. This is both a polite thing to do and a good strategic move in case you want another recommendation letter from them in the future.

Second, check online to find out the location of your college’s career center. Read online what’s listed as available for freshmen. (I’m not talking about deciding your major or your career path now, I’m talking about knowing what resources are available.) And then plan to stop by the career center during freshman orientation or the first weeks of school to pick up pamphlets and other information about possible opportunities.

Third, consider in your summer plans whether you have time to explore a possible new passion or interest – something that you might want to pursue while at college and beyond. For example, your passion up to now has been music, and you’ve done a great deal in the music field. Yet you’re also interested in the subject of biology. Why not try for a short summer internship or work experience in the vast field of biology? This way, when you visit your college’s career center in the fall, you’ll have two possible areas of interest to explore.

As with many things in life, the better prepared you are the more you can expect to achieve.

Sports Can Play a Part in College Acceptances

The April 5^th Wall Street Journal had an interesting “Golf Journal” article by John Paul Newport about teen girls having a good shot at college golf scholarships.

Newport said: “….girls have better odds than boys do” (of getting college golf scholarships. “Only a third as many girls as boys play competitive golf in high school and on the junior-tournament circuits (the same gender ratio as for adults), yet there are substantially more total golf scholarships available for girls.”

Newport goes on to explain that the reason for more golf scholarships for girls is Title IX, the 1972 federal legislation mandating gender equity in college athletics. In many colleges, all-male football programs reduce the number of scholarships for boys in other sports.

Yet before any teen girls dash out to local golf courses to take up the sport, check the statistics of how good a girl has to be to get a college golf scholarship. “Unless they can regularly break 75 on 6,000-yard courses,” Newport says, “girls shouldn’t even think about applying to elite programs like those at Duke or UCLA.”

So why am I bringing up this topic if this opportunity is available for so few teen girls?

Because there are many other sports in colleges that need team members. And leaving scholarships opportunities aside, the coaches of these college sports teams may have a say in student acceptances.

Before you assume that your playing on your high school’s lacrosse team wouldn’t interest anybody, check out the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s website at www.ncaa.org to see which schools have college teams in your sport and gender. You may be surprised to learn that a college that interests you has a need for lacrosse players of your ability.

If You’re a Junior in High School Now -- Don’t Panic About College Acceptances

Today The Wall Street Journal had it annual doom-and-gloom article about how low the college acceptance rates were this year at prestigious colleges and how many high school seniors didn’t get into the schools to which they applied (“Bad News U: Colleges Reject Record Numbers” by Anjali Athavaley).

Here’s a reader beware caution: You almost have to have a degree in mathematics and the mind of a copyeditor to truly understand the numbers behind the alarming headline.

Yes, the acceptance percentage rates are down at some prestigious schools. But this does NOT necessarily mean a smaller number of students has been accepted this year. These schools had higher application numbers this year, which affects the percentage of applicants accepted.

Simple math – if you accept 10% of 20,000 students applying one year, that’s 2,000 students. If you take the same 2,000 students out of a larger applicant pool of 24, 000 students, that’s only 17% of applicants accepted. BUT THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS ADMITTED TO THE FRESHMAN CLASS IS STILL THE SAME – 2,000!

The reasons applications are up so high include:

• elimination of early decision programs at some prestigious schools
• larger number of students graduating high school and going on to college
• the push for students to “apply at 10 to 12 schools, with some applying to as many as 20,” according to the Journal article

This trend for students to apply to so many schools is something with which I heartily disagree. Colleges know students are applying to so many schools, and colleges have an emphasis on yield (the percentage of admitted students who actually attend a college).

This means it is vitally important for colleges to be on the lookout for which students really mean the statement “This college is my first choice” and other such college application essay statements – and which students are using computer software to insert these statements in 20 applications.

Hold on a minute! Of course, students should not put all their eggs in one basket, or even three baskets. I think students should apply to six to eight colleges in a range of “difficulty” in terms of academic level in conjunction with well-considered appreciation of what the student has to offer the university.

Yes, you heard me correctly. What a student has to offer a university and NOT what a university has to offer a student. (It goes without saying that a potential college application list should only include schools that appeal to a student on whatever his/her own list includes – location, size, public or private, etc.)

The topic of what a student has to offer a college deserves its own post. What I want to emphasize here is that students should spend their time writing persuasive applications for six to eight well-chosen colleges – rather than using the scatter-shot approach of applying to 20 colleges in the hopes that some shots will hit the marks.

The normal high school senior just does not have enough time to do a good job of persuasively applying to so many schools. He/she should put in the time “up front” to carefully choose, and then do the best job possible applying to his/her well-chosen list.

Learning From Graduate School Application Rejections

Yesterday a friend told me her daughter didn’t get accepted to a graduate program to which she had applied. This happened even though the daughter had made the first cut based on grades and standardized test scores and thus got an interview on campus.

I suggested to my friend that her daughter call the graduate program and ask what she could have done to have gotten an acceptance. In other words, what could she have improved that would have made the difference?

Was her essay not strong enough? Were her interviewing skills weak? Or were there just too many applicants with similar backgrounds to hers, and the graduate program wanted a more diverse student body?

My friend wasn’t sure that her daughter should try to find out why she hadn’t been accepted. After all, it’s one person’s reason. Maybe that person didn’t think highly of her daughter’s interviewing skills yet another person would think highly of the same skills.

Because I could see both sides of this question, I said that, if the daughter got into at least one of the other four graduate programs to which she applied, then there probably wasn’t a need to find out what she could have done to improve her admittance chances at the other schools.

But if the daughter didn’t get accepted into any of the four programs, she might consider checking with these schools before she begins applying to other graduate programs.

What do you think? When would it be a good idea to try to find out why you weren’t accepted somewhere? And when would it not be a good idea to try to do this?