High School Junior + College = Head Spinning

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Sep 30th 2009, 6:45 pm

#61

Mummy in the foothills

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Re: High School Junior + College = Head Spinning

Quote:

Originally Posted by Englishtart

I did mention that to him, I told him that he will probably end up in front of a classroom anyway, at the end of all his (10 yrs) education!

We looked up a few proffessionals in the fields to see how they had gotten to their goals, very interesting careers, but you are right, pretty limited.

I will talk to him about going the pharmacist route, really he just needs to get on the ladder, he can make more directional choices along the way.

Ideally he needs a philanthropic mentor...how are you fixed?

My friends oldest started out wanting to be a pharmacist and changed at the end of first year to Biology major, he's about the finish his Masters in Biology then will go straight on to his Phd. He went from high school into the 4 year college he's on year 5 now. We think on day he'll run the CDC, he's really into his testing and germs

Sep 30th 2009, 7:17 pm

#62

jumping doris

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Re: High School Junior + College = Head Spinning

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sue

Thank you, that is really encouraging. The cousellor did say not to panic, but I thought she was just trying to be nice, rather than saying "you're screwed"

When you start looking there are so many colleges. Obviously there are all the big private and state ones but, as someone else said, there are lots of smaller state colleges and seemingly millions of private ones.

Our two big local ones are Pitt and Penn State and they have a fair few satellite colleges. If a prospective student doesn't have a brilliant GPA then they seem to be offered one of these with the posiibility of a move to main campus after a few years.

I also discovered that our high school counselling dept has enormous filing cabinets full of literature about colleges, scholarships etc that they didn't seem to make everyone aware of.
I found out because I did some PTA work in the school as a college greeter (greeting college reps and showing them to a room where they spoke to students) and filing the post from colleges.
Your high school might be different but I felt our counsellors didn't make all the students aware of the resources the school had.

Another piece of advice from our counsellor was to make yourself memorable when you go to college fairs and on college visits.
That was easy for us because of our English accents. Nearly everyone we met wanted to know where we had moved from....Liverpool, although we don't have that accent because we weren't born there.
That led onto the Beatles...(why are they so obsessed with them here) and it seemed months later everyone remembered meeting us.
It did open a couple of doors for my eldest in that we got to speak to the right people when it mattered.

Sep 30th 2009, 9:14 pm

#63

Xebedee

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Re: High School Junior + College = Head Spinning

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sally Redux

Some really good points there. We were just talking about how much less self-sufficient my son is than we remember being at his age.

Its so cultural I think - one of the bits of that social chasm between the UK and the US.
Still, in my addled mind its no reason to let them be "molly-coddled" (does anyone even use that term anymore??)

I'll be happy if I can impart some "street-smarts" into them and then let college arm them for a paycheck. Either that or they have the wherewithall to make their own way from the common sense (I hope to Budda) they will pick up.

Like the old saying goes: "you can lead a headbanger to water, but you can't make him wash"

Uh