Everyday Tactics #3 : College

Ok, so you want to be a college superstar.  There are several key pitfalls you need to avoid.  Here is one of the best pieces of advice I could ever give you:   

Do not declare your Major right away.

Don't declare your Major early unless your school offers some huge, tangible advantage for doing so.  (That would be really rare.)  

If you declare your Major early, and take some of your Major's classes, and then 1 or 2 or 3 semesters later you realize this Major isn't the right one for you, you have wasted a lot of time, energy, and money that you can never get back.  This can lead to Summer classes, or a later graduation date than you expected, or both.

You should start college by taking a slate full of the "core" classes that everyone has to take anyway.  These classes are the most similar to what you experienced in high school, and by taking them first you give yourself the best opportunity to pump up your GPA, and this will protect you for the rest of your college career.

I got 4 A's and 1 A- during my first college semester.  I never quite replicated that level of performance in any of my 7 subsequent semesters.  That first big number I posted insulated me for the rest of my college career.   

The standard GPA scale is very flawed, but if your school uses it, as most do, then whatever grades you get first will have the biggest impact on your total "all time" GPA, simply because of the rules of division.  The more courses you take over the years, the harder it becomes to change your GPA one way or the other. That's just division for ya.   

The traditional GPA also treats every credit the same.  If I take a really easy class and I get a B, and then I take a really hard class and I get another B, the traditional GPA scale considers both classes to be equal as long as those classes were worth the same amount of credits.  I got two B's and both classes were worth 3 credits each.  The end.

Now if potential employers look at your transcript and see what actual courses you took, they won't consider all your classes to be equal, but the GPA scale does.  It's dumb, and they should change it, but as long as it's set up this way you should plan accordingly.

Give yourself at least all of Freshman year to research the realities of each Major that you're interested in. You want to be as sure as possible that you pick the one that's right for you.  When you're picking your Major you need to ask yourself: "What will my job prospects be when I graduate from this Major in 4 years?"

Also, please don't pick your Major based solely on what your family wants you to do.  You should go into a field you actually enjoy and have a natural affinity for, even though your mother has been telling you to become a surgeon for the past 10 years.



One More Note

As the cost of college continues to climb to obscene levels while knowledge and technology become easier and easier to acquire, a person has to ask themselves if the traditional college model really makes sense for them.  Colleges are like any other business in this sense; They're going to keep raising their prices until people stop paying those prices.

I can hunker down in a library and learn a lot of stuff on my own, for free, through a combination of book and computer research.     

One big element that contributes to the high cost of college, is the fact that colleges know you can get loans to pay for school.  They know you can afford it in the short term even if you don't really know how you'll pay off those loans in the long term.  No college can guarantee you anything.  Industries change, and the demands of the marketplace evolve.  Does college make sense for you based on the particular jobs and careers you want to pursue in life?