A great college fit must include the likelihood of graduation
June 27th, 2022
Students ask me all the time if I can help them get into college. I tell them I'm not interested in getting anyone in - but I'd love to help them get out of college. College, in other words, is particularly valuable if you actually graduate. People with a bachelor's degree enjoy significantly higher earnings, live longer, healthier lives, and are more engaged in civic pursuits than those who do not graduate. The lifespan gap between college graduates and those with only a high school diploma is striking: college graduates live on average 10 more years.
These benefits accrue, though, only if you finish your college degree. This is why, when you apply to college, it is essential that you find what college counselors say is a school that is a good ''fit." But what does ''fit" mean? How can you know if a school ''fits'' you, when you can't try it on before making a substantial commitment to attend?
A good-fit college provides four crucial benefits:
Skills. It teaches the essential hard and soft skills to succeed in a career. Hard skills include those specific for a profession - coding, for instance, for a software engineer. Soft skills, like teamwork or the ability to communicate, are necessary for all jobs and careers.
Network. It creates a network of peers to support you long after you receive a diploma. This network will also, over a lifetime, connect you to job opportunities. It is estimated that 80% of job openings are not advertised, so you will need a community of friends and believers to connect you to invisible circuits of opportunity.
Legacy. It is a place where you are, for the most part, happy and proud to be affiliated with in the present and future. When considering a school, ask: “Will I be proud to wear this T-shirt when I'm 65?''
Transformation. It is a school that will transform the ways that you think and solve problems and deepen your understanding of the way the world works.
When these four aspects combine into a total college experience, they are personally and professionally invaluable. It isn't easy to navigate to a school that gives you these four gifts. You are going to have to do a lot of research. Filing financial aid forms, researching scholarships and meeting deadlines are important tasks, but you will need a counselor who will connect with you personally and get to know your present self and help you fully imagine your future self.
In a way, an effective college counseling is a systematic form of dream catching! Those of us who love college counseling love it for this very reason: finding the right college is also a journey of self-discovery.
(This editorial appeared in The Buffalo News on June 23, 2022)
