Dramatically
Improve Your College Life By
Making the Right Decisions
Take
the risk out of choosing a college, learn the secrets
of being accepted, and make the best decisions during
your college years with this comprehensive decision-making
resource for students and their parents.
Decide
Better! For College, the latest addition
to the Decide Better! series, will help you make better
decisions about every aspect of your college journey,
including:
Which college is right for me?
What should I major in?
How can I pay for college?
How do I balance my time?
Should I live on campus?
Short,
lively chapters offer useful examples and worksheets
to help you apply these proven decision-making techniques
to the full range of choices students must make in
college: roommates, classes, partying, sex, money,
studying abroad, life after college, and much more.
Find
the Right College and Get the Most
Out of Your College Experience!
Decide
Better! For College is the latest addition
of the world-leading “Decide Better!” self-help series
created to dramatically improve your life through
better decisions.
This
book is the perfect decision-making resource for students
and parents designed to take the risk out of choosing
a college and make the overall college experience
the absolute best.
Yearly,
students leave home for college and are thrust into
making countless decisions compounded with academic
stresses and social pressures. Decide
Better! For College helps students
with all aspects of their college careers – from deciding
which college to attend, which major to study, how
to manage their financial situation, and how to plan
for their post-graduation lives.
It
includes the full range of decisions that students
will face while in college, such as academic decisions,
social decisions, relationship decisions, financial
decisions, and planning decisions. These lessons are
presented in short, insightful chapters that are motivational
and fun to read, and include examples and decision
worksheets to help apply decision techniques.
No
college student or parent should be without it!
Unprepared
College Students
Confronted by Life-Shaping Decisions
College
students are suddenly thrust into a world where they
have to make major life-shaping decisions on their
own, with little to no direction from others and little
prior experience making these types of decisions.
It's not fair. But that's life.
Throughout
high school, students are somewhat sheltered with
little responsibility for decisions. Parents, teachers,
and schools make most academic decisions for them,
as well as decisions about balancing commitments.
Parents set boundaries for what is acceptable behavior,
ranging from how much time to spend on academics,
whether smoking, drinking, or drugs are going to be
allowed, and what type of interaction with boyfriends
or girlfriends will be permissible.
In
college, all of that changes overnight. Once they
hit campus, parents and teachers are no longer physically
present. Students need to make their own decisions.
Academically, this means deciding what courses to
take and what to major in, as well as how much time
to study. They need to decide on extracurricular activities,
roommates, what to do in the summer, and whether to
study a semester abroad.
Most
high school students were required to abide by the
social and academic boundaries set by their parents,
but once in college they are free to do what they
want, when they want. They decide on their own boundaries
or live without any. In college they are confronted
by decisions about partying, sex, drinking, and drugs.
The vast majority of students are not prepared to
make these decisions. They can be easily swayed by
peer pressure when they are not strong in their own
decisions. And for the first time, they are on their
own financially, needing to make spending decisions
and eve borrowing decisions as they are all offered
credit cards for the first time.
Life-shaping
decisions begin even before they set foot on campus.
The decisions about which schools to apply to and
which to attend set them on a journey for the rest
of their lives. Although they get advice on these
college application and selection decisions from parents
and advisors, in the end they make their own decisions,
even if they don't know how to make them.
College
student decisions - or the decision not to make intentional
decisions - are life shaping, and they are not prepared
to make these decisions. The damage done from poor
decisions made by college students can be measured
in high drop-out rates, numerous academic failures,
wide-spread discipline problems, costly changes in
majors and schools, and unfortunately, high injury
rates.
Decision
making is a skill, but one that is often overlooked
in preparing students to jump into a world where their
decisions have life-shaping ramifications. Our students
are taught how to form a proper sentence, how to calculate
mathematical equations, and even the history of our
great country. But they are never taught the skill
that can possibly lead to great success or potential
failure. We seem to prefer that they learn by making
mistakes - and unfortunately that is how they learn
to make decisions in college, through mistakes.
At
this time of year, millions of high school students
are preparing for their college journey. The least
we can do as parents, educators, and mentors is to
help them improve their decision-making skills to
prepare them for this new world of decisions they
will confront.
