At the mere age of 17, we are expected to choose the career path that will decide our life. Left with no option, we end up seeking the answer to “what next, after 12th”.
Amidst the noise of unsolicited advice in the garb of ‘we care for your future, beta’, you end up more confused than sure. Been there, done that. So, I thought of collating a list of dos and dont-s we all could do with when we are on the brink of a critical decision that sets our future in motion for at least another decade.
In this article, you will read:
- How should you select a field of study?
- How should you make a college preference list?
- Who you should speak to?
- Who you should not speak to?
Given that you chose your stream in Class 11th, you have a fair idea of what you might want to venture in when it comes to studying. Even if you have finalized on a different stream altogether, that’s okay, the do’s and dont’s remain the same.
How should you select a field of study?
Before you begin searching for possible fields of study, it is essential that you ask yourself what matters to you the most. For some students, following their passion is important to their higher education but for most others, a well-paying job is the final goal. Based on your circumstances and your tastes, you should begin with understanding what you really want to gain from a college degree. This can take the form of availing the services of a professional career guidance counselor or can even be assessed through introspective discussion within one’s family and friend circles.
Once you have a good idea of your own aspirations, look up articles on the web to understand other people’s experiences in the fields of your choice. You could also do this by tapping into your personal networks – be it your school seniors who have joined colleges, your cousins who also might have pursued similar fields, or even your teachers who might be interested in helping clarify things for you. By comparing these pros and cons against your own needs from a higher education, you can identify the field of your choice and begin looking for the “right college.”
How should you make a college preference list?
Like choosing a field of higher education, choosing a college depends on many individual and social factors. After you have reached a decision on your stream, look up resources on the internet to identify leading colleges across those streams. For each of these colleges, you can then begin gathering information on a range of topics. While these topics vary for different students, based on their priorities, some common areas include fees of schooling, placement statistics, diversity of one’s peer group, access to lecturers, etc.
While a quick Google search is a good place to begin this exercise, looking for college-specific groups, run by current students, is an additional approach. For instance, students at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) run a Facebook group called ‘BITSAT Queries’, wherein current students help potential newcomers and even their parents in making an informed call about their college preferences. Although similar online groups might not exist for all colleges, talking to the relevant people offline can be just as effective.
Who should you speak to?
Selecting whom to talk to (and whom to avoid :P) while deciding on your future education can be a challenging exercise. If any of your immediate peers (friends, cousins, relatives, etc.) have attended the college or the stream that you are interested in, it would be ideal to talk to as many of them as possible. Doing so would provide you with a third-person’s perspective and would help you reach your decision better.
On top of that, if you are privileged enough to be taking private or home tuitions, the tutors, themselves, can be a repository of relevant information. Your school teachers, especially heads of departments or the senior staff, can also act as a similar resource, but this is likely to depend significantly on your social and economic location. Instead, using the internet to identify online communities on platforms like Reddit or Facebook can also help you in connecting the right people.
In the end, if nothing works, shooting polite DMs to the college’s seniors on Instagram, Facebook, or Linkedin, can also get you the honest and insightful answer that you badly require.
Who you should not speak to?
Okay, then! You have identified a field of study and a prospective college, and have also had a chat with all the people you think are right for your purposes. However, just before you are about to make up your mind about your final decision, you are approached by a random distant relative, who just loves telling you how your field of choice is inconsequential and that it is, indeed, Mechanical engineering that is “still evergreen.” I mean, we all know an uncle like that.
Well, fear not. While it might be disrespectful, and therefore, impossible, for some of us to outrightly ignore these uncles, bear in mind that they aren’t the ones who’ll be going through college again. Instead, it will be you! And you are not obligated to accept the support of someone who you think is not qualified to provide it. Any second-hand information about your college or field of study should be accepted with a grain of salt, and you should always accompany a ‘tip’ like this with your own research. Check out steps 1, 2, and 3, on how to do that.
Similarly, while the information provided by college websites is straight from the horse’s mouth, they have an incentive to partially reveal or even hide select information to get you to join them. Like with uninformed uncles and aunties, wrongly incentivised college websites should also be double-checked by you independently, before you consider taking them at their word.
Choosing a college or a preferred field of higher education is not as simple as it is made out to be in popular culture (think Raju’s or Farhan’s frustration in 3 idiots). More often than not, it is a rather rigorous exercise that requires one to question their own priorities and the role of their families before they make an informed decision. This exercise can even take the form of conflicting priorities between 17-year-olds and their parents, which can be a messy thread to untangle.
However, before you begin dealing with any of the messiness, it is essential to be aware of the resources at your hand and the ways in which you can use them to reach an end-point that makes you feel both excited and rewarded!
Have you got any other point to add? Tell me in the comments below! And good luck for your college life!