Average Student – The Real College Success Guide The Big Picture The Unspoken Truth about GPA Score 12 Years of Your Life, 18 - 30 Degree Timeline Grade Point Average (GPA) Score College Myths and Realities Navigating School Websites and Catalogs Choosing a Major The Unspoken Hierarchy of Majors Job Market Analysis internet, newspaper, job descriptions – entry level / junior / associate, compare to what the school program offers Skill vs. Will Life Goals Choosing a School – mention that MIT recruits geniuses, and Univ of Wyoming, Laramie recruits people from good schools with ok GPAs Lists U.S. News and World Report Peterson's Guide Other Lists and Sources Visiting the Schools Trade-offs NEW: Online Universities Choosing Courses Professor and Their Reputations Course Difficulty, Marketability, Interest Level Upper-division Specializations Scheduling NEW: Free online courses Paying for School Scholarships Loans Deferments Entrance / Exit Interviews Interest Rates Finances Part-time / On-campus Employment Living Arrangements Living with Parents On-campus Near-campus and Off-campus With Roommates Without Roommates Balancing Academic Workload and Social Life Professors Classmates and Friends Forming Study Groups and Project Courses Study Tactics Exams, Homework and Grading Clubs Fraternities and Sororities Parties Friendships Old Friends vs. New Friends Supplies Bookstores Bags Desks Chairs Computers Video games Calculators Music Dealing with Parents Money Visiting Graduating “On Time” vs. “Your Own Pace” Strategic Timing Part-time Employment Internships / Research Working for Professors Working Towards Graduate School Tests Research Assistantship vs. Teaching Assistantship Staying out of Trouble Miscellaneous Tips for Maximizing Success Summary Introduction What kind of student are you? Do you know? How do you find out? A simple way to model this is to say that there are 3 kinds of student: over-achiever, average and drop out. A person can be any or all of these over the stretch of time that represents their time spent at college. For most students who aren’t Michael Dell or Bill Gates (two famous students that dropped out of college to start a business), they aim for over-achiever status and away from drop out status. But competition in school can be fierce, and in a zero-sum game (anyone who doesn’t win the game, loses the game), the overachiever wins and everyone else is average or a dropout. It doesn’t seem like college is a zero-sum game when students are graded on an absolute scale (i.e.: 93+ is an A, 85-92 is a B, and so on). But college introduces the idea of grading on a scale, so that all grades are relative to the highest performing (over-achiever) student, and there will always be a set number of “C’s”, “D’s” and “F’s” in the class for each assignment. But regardless of the testing scheme, the hierarchy of the 3 student types sure seems to be zero-sum, and colleges are set up to reward the over-achiever at the exclusion of everyone else. This book attempts to provide guidance to the average student. That is to say, this book addresses the student that applies themselves in every way that they think possible but still end up getting average grades, average internships (or no internships) or average career opportunities based on their educational achievements. This is the type of student that performed well enough in high school to make it to college, but who doesn’t know the realities of college that most people come to grasp only in hindsight, after they have already graduated from the university. This book attempts to address the average student and to provide guidance in clear, no-nonsense descriptions of tricks, tips, models of behavior and traps to avoid that will smooth the transition of a high school student into becoming a proficient college student. When an over-achieving high school student applies to go to college, they tend to have many advantages helping them to make the best decisions possible. More often than not, they have supportive parents, teachers and friends to whom they can go to for guidance. Their grades are excellent, so it is likely that they have their pick of scholarships. In addition, if they come from a wealthy family, their parents have saved up for their college expenses, so the few loans that will carry over with them beyond their college years will be trivial. With most of their biggest hurdles taken care of before they step foot on a college campus, they have more time to concentrate on their academic achievement. This is certainly the ideal situation, but most people will not have it this easy. For the average student, significant hurdles await them before they even begin thinking about life beyond high school. Besides taking the standardized tests and writing the essays that all college applications require, students need to become concerned with many of the important intangibles of the college lifestyle that they may otherwise have taken for granted. These intangibles are the unspoken realities of dealing with college bureaucracies, navigating academic policies, and plugging into social networks that the school provides. Underlying this is the harsh reality that for most students there is a vast gulf between high school and college academics for which they must plan and appreciate if they wish to survive as well as to thrive. The over-achieving student in high school is not the same person as the over-achieving student in college. The reason is simple. In high school, a student generally competes against a small population of students. The student's class ranking reflects their standing against 10, 100 or sometimes 1000 other students. In college, the student is competing against every student in their major at their school, and hypothetically with every student in their major at every school in their region or in their country. In addition, when a student graduates from college, they are now competing against all other new graduates in their field, as well as anyone who has recently graduated in the previous few years who happens to be looking for employment in junior, associate or fresh-graduate positions. Expanded competition coupled with the fact that the quality of a student's high school education is often less than satisfactory and oftentimes inflated with “honors” and “advanced placement” credits means that the over-achieving high school student upon entering college may quickly find themselves to be an average-performing college student. The overachiever has fewer obstacles than the average student. Every success that the overachieving student obtains becomes another bullet-point on their resume. The average student's resume is typically meager by comparison. This is because the advice that career counselors give the average student is aimed not at them but instead at the overachieving student, whose GPA allows them access to internships, working with professors, inclusion in achievement-based fraternities, scholarships and the like. Overachieving students increase the prestige of the university, whereas the average student as an individual is replaceable, even though it is reasonable to assume that as a group their tuition expenses constitute most of the share of the university's income from tuition payments. Based on their resume and especially their GPA, the overachieving student usually has their pick of first jobs right out of college. The average student, on the other hand, will leave college with only a freshly minted degree, a firm handshake and a vague awareness that nearly every class that they took will be useless in the “real world.” This book attempts to present the “real” issues that an average student will face in college. An Aside: My High School Years I graduated from Harry A. Burke High School in Omaha, Nebraska in the spring of 1994. I was on top of the world and hoping to be moving on to a bright future. I was psyched to be entering engineering college as an Electrical Engineer, I was moving from Nebraska to a strange place, a new “country” called Texas and I was overfilled with anticipation to be a college student. All four of my high school years were spent as preparation for getting into college. I received my Eagle Scout award, I took calculus and physics courses, and I played football as an offensive lineman because it was fulfilling to do so, but also because it would look good on my college applications. I didn’t study or prepare for the ACT (the standardized test most often accepted by midwestern schools) and taking it I got a combined score of 30 (28 Math, 34 English), which was enough to get me into several Midwestern schools. I also took the SAT (another standardized test but most often preferred by non-midwestern universities) and I got a combined score of 1170, which I am told is only average. My scores and my grades were maybe slightly better than average, but blinded by the inflated grades that I received in honors courses (B’s become A’s), I assumed (and my teachers all affirmed) that I was well prepared for college. I was totally wrong about that. Unfortunately, no one around me was giving me the advice I needed to succeed. And I hadn’t spent any time developing study habits that I would need to tackle something as daunting as Electrical Engineering. What had I been doing during high school if not being studious? Well, I wasn’t a partier, and I didn’t drink alcohol or do drugs. I wasn’t popular so I wasn’t going to hipster parties (hipster wasn’t a concept back then), but I also wasn’t a complete loner as I had several close friends and many other friends who I wanted to get to know better.