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Originally Posted by Scottwax Awesome! My younger son knows his grades in high school have so far been rather unspectacular. He is hoping the rest of his junior year, his senior year and a couple years at a community college will be enough to get him into TCU for his junior and senior years of college.
Seems like you took a similar route. Any advice for my son? |
Hm. Well of course hard work. I think possibly doing well on the SAT may help (although some schools don't look at it for transfers). It certainly doesn't hurt.
One of the main things is finding good professors that you can ask for advice and small talk with. I have two. One I met in my first semester of college. The second I met my second semester, but she also teaches organic chemistry, so now I have her again. They're both supportive. It's hard to write a glowing letter of recommendation for somebody you don't know.
Getting involved in at least one club is great (a sport is good too, two clubs or one sport and one club would look great). If he has the opportunity to join Phi Theta Kappa (honors society) it is worth the money and effort! My brother gets $2,000 a year. Rochester offers $5,000 a year. I pays off! It looks great. Being an officer would look great. It would also make him feel good, because you're really dealing with some good people that join.
You know, you meet people at community college that are just interesting. Single mothers. Veterans. People that have had some not so good pasts. They're much more genuine than some of the people at other schools that are very fortunate (much more genuine than myself). I'm fortunate to have met these people. It's really a "community" college. Hindsight is 20/20, if I would have gone to University of Buffalo I probably wouldn't have branched out of my comfort zone.
There's the bad points. There are certainly people that are there for no reason whatsoever. You just avoid them. My goal in high school was to have a 90 average. My goal in college is to have a 4.0. It makes a big difference to set your goals as high as possible. Choosing courses you want to take are a big thing. There are a lot of people going to school to "make good money." That's fine, but they tend to also be the people that 1) don't learn the material and 2) cheat by placing index cards in their calculators. It's terrible. It happens. You have to choose something you're going to love.
So: get two or three professors and just get advice and keep them updated with your career goals. Having at least one in your intended major is good practice. I hate to say this, but if they have a PhD behind their name it probably adds some oomph.
Join a club or two. Play a sport. Show that you have a interest other than course work.
Learn to write well. The essay just has to be genuine and free from glaring errors. I didn't get touchy feely, nor did I use every ten cent word in my vocabulary.
Take courses that interest you. Don't be motivated by an "effort pays off" attitude. One does best when they are intrinsically motivated to do well (interest!). Just look at the people that detail here. Of course people do it for money, but they're all very very very interested in it. They do very good work. Better than the dealer that's out to make a profit? Of course. You're going to take some boring courses and courses you really don't want to take (art 100? hahaha). You detail some cars that you'd rather not detail, but you want the money. It happens, but an entire degree shouldn't be that way.
You just have to be dedicated I guess.
I don't really care to indulge in my 11th grade debacle here. I don't mind talking about it in private at all, but I don't want to talk about it here.
Congratulations, Corey!
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