Posts filed under 'College Majors'
Just when you think you got high school figured out, it’s time to start thinking about college. Many high school students are wasting no time at all and are starting their college search during their sophomore year.
A recent study by Eduventures finds that 42 percent of high school students start looking at colleges as early as the second year of high school. The Boston company quizzed about 11,000 high school juniors and seniors in the U.S. to get their results.
Starting early is not a bad idea. In fact, getting a jump start on discovering which colleges and majors are of interest to you and how much it could cost to attend can help relieve some of the college search stress during your last year of high school. So go ahead: start thinking about whether a community college, public university, or private college is best for you. And don’t forget: starting early gives you more time to visit schools.
But starting early doesn’t mean students are narrowing the choices down more. The survey found:
• Almost 20 percent of students are now applying to 10 or more colleges and universities. (That’s a LOT of application fees!)
• The mean number of applications for high school seniors increased from 6.3 to 7.3 since 2008.
At the start of your search, you may be lured by a college’s glossy brochure showing a picturesque campus and giving an enticing overview of the reasons that you would want to attend. But as students get closer to high school graduation, the survey found them relying more on websites to get information about schools. The survey also says something you might have already suspected: Social media outlets are becoming more common among juniors and seniors. In fact, a whopping 44 percent are using YouTube channels and 41 percent are using Facebook pages.
Did you start looking at colleges as a sophomore? How much have you relied on Facebook, YouTube and other social media in your college search?
–Lori Johnston
September 15th, 2011
During the summertime gap between high school and college, you don’t need to completely stop learning. Avoid having brain freeze in the fall by finding ways to educate yourself this summer as you work, vacation with family, and hang out at home. Need some ideas? Here are five ways college students recommend to keep learning during the summer:
1. Brush up on skills at work
Even if you’re in a restaurant job or washing cars or mowing yards, use the time at work to improve your skills, from math to learning about different management styles by watching your bosses. Babysitting is a great way to better your communication skills, too!
2. Read a book
If your fall syllabus (typically available online) for American literature, history, or another course already lists the required reading, get a jump start on one of those books. Or download on your Kindle or check out from the library a biography of someone successful in a career field of interest to you, and get the inside scoop about that profession. Want to read something lighter? Then go for the latest beach read–reading IS reading, after all. Reading books or magazines will improve your comprehension skills, so it won’t feel so weird once fall comes to pick up a book again.
3. Travel abroad
If you’re heading to another country with your parents or friends, or maybe were lucky enough to get a graduation present to Europe or another beautiful location, embrace learning about the world, too. Bringing back your knowledge of sights, history, languages, and different cultures can help you as you enter college. A global perspective is beneficial in classes ranging from political science to business.
4. Help others
During the college application process, you saw how schools sought students who were involved in the community. Now that you’ve been accepted, don’t make volunteering part of the past. Continue to volunteer or get involved in a new organization. Understanding the challenges facing people in our society today is knowledge that you can bring into possible class discussions this fall–and at the very least, you’ll impress your professor.
5. Learn online
Signing up for an online course will help you knock out one of the required first-year classes and give you a head start in your college education. You’ll learn not only the course material, but you’ll also learn what it takes to motivate yourself. And that could be the greatest lesson you learn this summer – how to get motivated, without your parents, to study and complete college assignments when so many things serve as distractions.
How are you learning and still enjoying the summer?
–Lori Johnston
July 11th, 2011
Want to get a sense of the highs and lows about being a college student? You’ll find realistic insight–in real time–on Twitter. Students’ comments capture the college experience – so here’s some of the honest truth about academics, relationships, money, and more.
Now’s the time to read all the comments – good and bad – because #incollege is trending on Twitter this week. Here’s a few of our favorites. If you’re on Twitter, go on and add some words of wisdom of your own.
–Lori Johnston
May 26th, 2011
My office is a pretty fun place to be, and as a result, my coworkers and I have participated in more than a few of the most RANDOM conversations known to man. In fact, just this morning, what started out as a conversation with my coworker about slang expressions somehow ended up with my uttering this vehement statement: “And THAT is why I no longer work with actors.”
Not following the logic of that conversation? Don’t worry, neither did we.
I don’t really have that much against actors, by the way. But as an English and theatre double major in college, I decided that writing, not stage management, was the career that better suited me. When did I make this decision? After I spent a month as an assistant stage manager at a summer stock theatre on the Jersey Shore. It was the summer after my freshman year of college, and although I had a blast and learned a lot, I came back to school knowing that I probably would not pursue a career in theatre.
So why didn’t I drop my theatre major? Well, because I enjoyed studying theatre way too much. Also, my knowledge of plays and playwrights helped me immensely in my study of English literature. And besides, I understood then that a college degree is a college degree; regardless of my subject matter, it would ultimately be my overall intelligence and ability that would get me into grad school or a great job later on.
College students who change their majors numerous times are called fickle–though I prefer the term “adventurous.” Isn’t it easier to change your career interest while still in school? Just look at the number of career-changers out there now. Can’t be easy to shift focus on your professional life when a paycheck is at stake, right?
Anything worth working for is also worth working hard. That’s why when you hear people talk about how they’ve explored new career or academic interests, listen up. If you get to college next year and meet and upperclassman who’s on major change #4, buy him or her a cup of coffee and ask a few questions. Find out what drives them to succeed. No one says success is perfect, and no one says there’s a single straight road to success, either.
Speaking of questions, what academic majors and careers do you want to learn more about? My random conversation today might have inspired a new series of blog posts, I hope. I want to reach out to students and working adults who once changed their minds about their future endeavors and learn more about how they got to where they are now. Have an idea for me? Leave it in the comment section below.
–Barbara Bellesi
May 18th, 2011
As I mentioned in my blog on Monday, it’s definitely cool having friends in the theatre. Catching up with them usually means meeting them after the show in New York, but this time, the location was Las Vegas–home of gambling, strip clubs, and the one and only Cirque du Soleil.
My old Wagner College buddies Mary Cloutier Barnett and Becky Slater Stephenson are former East Coast residents who love their life and work in Vegas. They were good friends in college and are now even better friends through Cirque; Mary is one of the stage managers at LOVE and Becky is one at nearby Ka, the show that is often referred to as “the opera of Cirque du Soleil.”
“I didn’t know what a stage manager was when I first was at school,” Mary admitted . In fact, unlike myself, she had entered the theatre program for performance “until I saw the error of my ways,” she jokes. She began to look at stage management as a viable option for a career, worked on show after show at Wagner in a backstage or management capacity, and the rest is history.
While it’s clear that she ultimately learned what a stage manager was while we were at Wagner, I can tell you that there was nothing at our college that could prepare anyone for the craziness that is Cirque. Frankly, no college can—no Broadway theatre, let alone a college theatre, could literally contain a Cirque show. In fact, Mary told me that Cirque shows usually require theatres to be built or renovated specifically to accommodate them.
So how does one become a stage manager at Cirque? “Stage management is 80 to 85 percent communication,” says Becky, referring to the fact that she is the link between the cast, crew, and everything and everyone in between. Mary agrees. Despite Cirque being unlike any other show on stage, it is like other shows off stage. “You learn by experience,” she says. And while a theatre degree certainly helps, Becky says that she would advise any aspiring stage manager to also take classes in management and communication to prepare them for backstage life.
I caught up with Becky and Mary when they were both on maternity leave. Becky said the Cirque cast and crew has prepared her well for motherhood. “I’m a glorified mother [at Cirque],” Becky said with a laugh. It’s true—part of being a stage manager means rounding up the “kids,” making sure they are ready for the show, and generally keeping the rest of the “family” happy.
Becky, left, and Mary, with their new little ones.
The technical part of the job, of course, comes with “calling” the show, the term used for the cues the stage manager gives during the show as to when lights go on or off, when sets change, and, in true Cirque du Soleil fashion, when a cast member literally comes flying onto the stage.
“I have a healthy fear of calling shows,” Becky says when I questioned her about what it’s like at work. But she’s no shrinking violet; this “fear” is simply something that keeps her on her toes for every second of the performance. And rightly so: there are 80 cast members in Ka (Mary has 65 in LOVE), and there’s a whole lot that can go wrong. Is every show a marvel of technical perfection? No, but that’s the beauty of live theatre.
It used to frustrate Mary to no end when she’d go and talk to her advisor about her future career in the theatre. “What do you think?” she’d ask, and he’d reply, “Figure it out.” But that was one of the best lessons she could learn during school. “Professors advise—you figure it out,” she says.
In college, theatre majors often set their sights on Broadway, but Las Vegas is about 2,000 miles away from midtown Manhattan. You won’t hear any complaints from Becky or Mary, though; be it Vegas or New York or any random city they experienced from their touring days, they’re doing the work that they love.
–Barbara Bellesi
October 27th, 2010
Yesterday’s #CollegeBound Twitter chat could have gone on forever–and we mean that in the most awesome way possible. The topic was college majors, and we had a great gathering of tweeps who shared some heartfelt advice about choosing majors based on their own college experiences.
It’s sad that we have to call it a college “major,” because it adds so much unnecessary pressure to students, who often think that the choice of what to study in college will make or break their futures. Not so! If you are still laboring under this delusion, feel free to read our chat transcript and see what choosing a college major really means.
Also, please note the humorous yet relevant tweets of our new friend @enotes, who kept us LOLing the entire hour. See you next Monday at 4PM ET!
–The CollegeBound Network
September 21st, 2010
Without a doubt, college can be a great four years. And like many college graduates, I’ve often thought about what it would be like to go back and have a do-over. Sure, I’d love to give my social life another go, but as the self-professed nerd that I am, I often think about other majors I could have given a try. Allow me to share some thoughts with you:
If I could go back to college, I would:
Major in psychology, so I could make sense of Spencer Pratt’s antics.
Study accounting, so I could help balance the budget in my home state of New York.
Major in music AND fashion design so that I could give Lady Gaga a run for her money.
Study computer science and create a product so cool that Steve Jobs would drop his iPad.
Major in an obscure foreign language, so that I could find a way to make Lindsay Lohan understand just exactly where her life is heading.
Study political science, so I could take over for any one of the many politicians whose personal lives cause them to self destruct.
Major in marketing and advertising, so I could help all those big corporations regroup after dropping Tiger Woods as their spokesperson.
Study exercise science, so that I could once and for all keep up with the Kardashians.
Major in physics or environmental science, so I could save the day in the BP oil spill disaster.
Study anthropology, so that I can make Mel Gibson understand that he is evolving into something that makes the caveman look like a perfect gentleman.
What will YOU be studying in college?
–Barbara Bellesi
July 14th, 2010
Today is International Nurse’s Day, a reminder to the rest of us that nurses are pretty awesome people. I once made the very naïve assumption that people chose to become nurses because they didn’t want to go through all the extra years of medical school to become doctors and specialists. Oh, how silly I was—not to mention WRONG.
There are many ways in which a nurse is different from a doctor—just ask any working nurse or current nursing student to give you the short list—but what I’ve seen for myself is that nurses are all about the patient. That’s not to say that doctors ignore the patient, of course, but physicians are intent on the disease or illness that afflicts the patient. Nurses work directly with the patients during treatment to ensure their comfort and, in the best of all possible scenarios, their full recovery. It’s not surprising, then, that nurses become close to the patients and their families, particularly during long hospital stays.
Until my father was diagnosed with leukemia last year, I counted myself pretty lucky to have avoided hospitals for most of my life. But when I visited my father during the long weeks of his treatment, I saw first hand that the very different roles that each person on his medical team played. I began to understand that it wasn’t a matter of ambition that made each person choose their profession—doctor, nurse, physician assistant, etc.—but what mattered to them. For nurses, again, it’s the patient; a nurse is so closely connected to the patient and his or her treatment and rehabilitation that it is no wonder that the nurses I know are among the most caring individuals I have ever met.
And here’s something about that set me straight regarding a nurse’s educational aspirations: did you know that nurses can become doctors? I’m not talking about MDs, but PhDs. After registered nurses earn their BSNs, they can move on to master’s degree and doctoral programs in nursing. Men and women who choose to further their education in the nursing field usually do so because they are attracted to careers in hospital administration, medical research, or education. Some even manage to combine all three, virtually dedicating their lives to a career that I once passed off as for people who simply was not a doctor.
My father is now in remission, but there were some pretty dark times during the past year when I needed to learn more about medication, procedures, and treatments than any former English major really should. But what was strange to me was all in a day’s work for my father’s nurses, which is why they wear the scrubs and I sit behind a laptop—and why I join the rest of the world in saluting all nurses and nursing students for all they do for the patients we love.
–Barbara Bellesi
May 12th, 2010
At The CollegeBound Network, we make it a point to read many other blogs to see what everyone else is buzzing about. The gossip blogs also make our reading list, because you never know where you’ll pick up an interesting tidbit about college. Case in point, Perez Hilton came through for us with this higher ed goodie: actress Dakota Fanning was seen on a campus tour of NYU.
We always love it when we hear that young celebrities are thinking about giving it the old college try, but what particularly interests us in this case is that Dakota was touring the Gallatin division of NYU, which is known for its design-your-own major type of study. While we can only speculate about what kinds of things interest the star of The Runaways, we applaud her for her decision to forge her own path.
NYU is a school known for its wealth of academic offerings, and it seems that Dakota wants to be free to pick and choose among them. The Gallatin division offers both BA and MA degrees to those students who have a firm grasp of what they want to study, although it might take several different programs to create the curriculum.
NYU is not the only school to offer individualized study plans. Other colleges and universities, including University of Washington, University of Minnesota, Pitzer College, and St. Mary’s College of Maryland, allow students to design their own major.
For those of you who have a major crisis when the word “major” comes up in college conversation, check out your curriculum options when you arrive at campus this fall, as many programs offer some type of cross-registration among different majors. If you are a junior now, consider inquring about it when you go on your campus visits this summer and next fall.
As for the 16-year-old Ms. Fanning, we applaud her for beginning her college search and are eager to see if NYU makes the cut.
–The CollegeBound Network
May 3rd, 2010
Yesterday I focused on some environmentally savvy colleges that have built green dorms on campus. But some eco-friendly students want more, and they are looking at colleges that can help them make an even bigger impression with Mother Nature. That’s right—I’m talking about green majors.
What’s a green major? Basically, it’s a program of academic study that focuses on ways to sustain the environment. Check out these three green-tinged majors and see if any of them fit your philosophy of preserving Planet Earth:
Food Science. If you think that what you eat only affects the way your hips or thighs will look, think again. What we put on our plates also affects the environment, so farmers, grocers, chefs, and government officials are looking towards food science to help us stay healthy. Food science—which is essentially a combination of basic sciences like biology, chemistry, and physics—helps determine how food is produced, processed, distributed, and evaluated. University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Arkansas, and Meredith College in Raleigh, NC are three schools that offer food science programs.
Urban Environmental Studies. Urban planners known all about how cities are designed and developed. But how do cities coexist with the environment? That’s where a major in urban environmental studies comes in. Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama has one such program in which students work to understand the sustainable relationship between humans and the environment. A program like this is very focused in the liberal arts: sociology, political science, ecology, and urban biodiversity are just some of the many ideas covered in a program such as this.
Marine Biology. If you are more of a dolphin or porpoise person than, say, a dog or a cat lover, then perhaps you’ve thought about becoming a marine biologist. The ocean is, after all, the largest ecosystem on earth, and there’s a ton of life forms out there to study. In a marine biology program, like the one at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, FL, students will learn about life underwater and how it balances with human life above. A green focus of marine biology is how human pollution upsets the balance of our water-loving friends and what we can do to stop it. At Mansfield University in Mansfield, PA, you can even major in fisheries science, a biology-based program that has focuses on aquaculture, fisheries biology, and fisheries management. Talk about interesting internship opportunities!
–Barbara Bellesi
April 23rd, 2010
Previous Posts
Just when you think you got high school figured out, it’s time to start thinking about college. Many high school students are wasting no time at all and are starting their college search during their sophomore year.
