On what basis does a teenager, a 16 or 17 year-old, answer that question? I'll tell you the colleges' multi-million dollar marketing campaigns.
Not only that, you can easily list on one page, one column of one page, the college names that are cited ninety-nine times out of one hundred.
A far better line of questioning is, "Why are you going to college? What do you plan to do with that six-figure degree? What are your plans for the day after you graduate from college?"
Those are the questions we ask, and even better, the questions we guide students through answering to their own satisfaction and success.
At Succeed Where It Counts we use a career assessment that is favored among Fortune 500® companies. That useful tool reliably identifies what the student will find rewarding, motivating, satisfying and fulfilling. Once again, we avoid asking the wrong question, "What are you good at?" Instead, the right question is, "What is the possible career directions in which you will find fulfillment and personal reward?" That is a very different kind of question, with powerfully motivating answers.
Following several weeks of exploration and inquiry into possible careers, Succeed Where It Counts then guides every student through a process of college elimination. You read that correctly from a long list of possibilities our students eliminate colleges that they feel are less than a good fit.
- What are the criteria?
- How far from home?
- Climatology mountains or coast? Cold climate or warm climate? Snow skiing or water skiing? Sunbelt or four seasons? There are criteria that are important to students, but about which they often don't give enough consideration.
- Campus Life what do students do when they are not in class, studying or sleeping?
- Sports intercollegiate or intramural, or doesn't care about that?
- Educational philosophy traditional lecture, term papers and written exams; or dialogical, experiential and interactive with the professional educators?
- You can probably think of more, and that's the point. Think, because a student will be living and working on their campus; 24/7, for at least 10 months of the year.
- Last, but hardly least, we look at the four-year course of study for the proposed major. Are those classes what you truly want to invest yourself in over four years?
