Educational Planning – Getting Started
Now that you know what you really like and what you want your life to be like, you may have identified some specific careers (nurse, teacher, investment broker) or at least some broad categories that you are interested in (healthcare, education, finance).
If you’re having trouble narrowing down your interests to this type of detail, you might want to pause here and talk to your parents, friends, guidance counselor and other people in your life to see if they can help you talk to someone who is in the field that gets you excited. There’s nothing like a “real life” account of a job to help you figure out if you would really want to do it every day.
To find the right school, you’ll first need to find out what kind of training is required for the career or field of your choice. This will help you to understand how many years of school you need to reach your goal. Many good jobs require a four-year bachelor’s degree, while some professions (such as doctors and lawyers) require at least seven years of schooling before entering the work force.
Activity:
- Research and write down the degree or training that is required for the career you think you’re most interested in pursuing.
- Do a search on which schools offer the kind of program you are interested in. At this point don’t limit yourself. List schools that are in your home state, out of state, private and public.
Try to understand your full range of options before you start narrowing the list down to the schools you’ll apply to. Some schools may seem too exclusive or expensive but might also offer great scholarships or financial aid packages.
- Look at your list of schools and put a star next to those that you are really drawn to. Visit their websites. You should be able to order literature about the school online, or you might have all of the information you need right at your fingertips. Write down what you like and don’t like about each school, and then dig deeper.
Talk to your parents, friends and teachers and see if they know anyone who goes to any of your top schools. Maybe they can help to facilitate a conversation with a current or recent student, or maybe you can email a student directly to talk about what life is like on campus.
- Don’t forget to look at trusted resources that rank schools annually and also publish many facts about the campus lifestyle.
Once you’ve gone through these exercises you should have a pretty good list of schools to target for your applications. We have all kinds of information available on applying, test preparation, and making the final choice. And at this point your guidance counselor, teachers, and parents should be able to work closely with you on approaching each of your top schools. Also, don’t forget that we are here to answer your questions and that your friends are going through the same process – so you are NOT alone!
Choosing a college involves so many factors including your career goals, school program offerings, how near or far you want to live from home, how large or small you’d like your classes and campus to be, what kinds of people you’d like to go to school with, how much money your family can afford to spend on your education, and how much financial aid you can get to fill any gaps.
Ultimately, you want to be true to yourself in choosing a school. You are the one who will be living there for four years! So as you delve into each area of exploration make sure that the schools you choose to apply to align with your honest answers to the important questions.
What are those questions? Get out a pad and paper, read on, and start to take inventory. With some patience and dedication to this process you might be surprised at how easy it will be to identify the schools you’re really interested in and to eliminate the ones you’re not!
Choosing the best college for you
We’re here to help. We’ve been there. And most of us didn’t have the Internet to make researching schools so fast and easy! But now young adults like you might be on information overload and need help sifting through the volumes of information that is out there.
An easy way to get started learning about different colleges is to use our College Search tool. Here you can find information about a particular college you’re interested in or a list of colleges that fit your profile. As you proceed, you’ll learn about the colleges and get the answers to your questions. It will then be easier to narrow down your choices. Take your time – this is an important decision and there is no rush. You can save your information that you collect on colleges so that you can review them later on.