By Rajkamal Rao
A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Many books have been written about why US high school
students should consider going to college.
The US government, by far, has been the biggest promoter of this idea. The GI Bill, the various federal loan
programs launched to help students pay for college and indeed, the
establishment of the Department of Education as a cabinet agency were all major
steps by the government to help increase college enrollment.
Going to college is one of the most meaningful decisions you
will make in your life. First, you need
to research which college to go to and what you will study. Next, you need to figure out how you pay for
college. And lastly, you need to market
yourself in your application and stand out so that you are likely to be offered
admission by the colleges you chose.
The trouble is that through the day you graduate from high
school, you have never had to make such life-changing decisions and act on them. The US K-12 education has been designed to
remove key education decisions from parents and children. The only major decision that parents make
about the education of their children is where to live. From that point on, a set of unbending,
bureaucratic process takes over.
Your elementary school is decided by your public school
district solely using an attendance zone, right down to street level maps
showing well-defined borders. Going to
school in the US is not only a right but a duty, mandated by state and federal
law. Admission to school is guaranteed
and in most cases, a school bus takes you to and from school. Everything in school is well choreographed by
teachers and the administration - and as long as you follow instructions and
put in good effort, you should do fairly well in school. Elementary schools feed to middle schools,
which feed to high schools. If your
parents were to maintain the same residence, the whole process is seamless -
you simply move from one school to another according to your home’s zip
code.
What you study in school is also largely decided for
you. Through upper middle school, the
regimen is fairly standard in that everyone studies the same topics, is tested
on the same material and is graded in a similar manner. There are exceptions, of course. Gifted and talented students are challenged
with more difficult curricula. In high
school, students can choose electives - subjects that they like to focus on
rather than take topics they are not good at.
The K-12 school deal that our society makes with children is
simple: Follow our factory-based,
one-size-fits-all approach and you don’t have to pay a dime to earn a high
school diploma. Sure, families pay real
estate taxes most of which go to funding public schools, but these taxes are not
elastic. That is, families don’t pay
more in real estate taxes if the household has more children. Or families don’t stop paying real estate
taxes when their children leave home after high school graduation.
College, however, is a completely different
proposition. All of a sudden, there seem
to be so many choices and decisions to make.
Attendance zones and zip codes are meaningless. Not only can a student decide to study in
another part of the state, he/she can go across the country or even to another
country to pursue post-secondary education.
And then, there’s the all-important decision about what to study. No longer is it enough to simply check in
with your guidance counselor once a year and follow a structured schedule of
classes. It is important that you know
who you are and what your interests are so that you can study further in those
fields.
Luckily, college-bound students in the US find that they
have a lot of support. US middle schools
begin introducing the idea of college through seminars and other information
sessions. Most high school websites have
dedicated sections devoted to college and the admissions process. The high school guidance counselor is by far
the most important professional that students can interact with to ask
questions and get unbiased answers in a familiar setting. Counselors spot gifted and talented students
and encourage them to build their brand by
getting them to participate in extra-curricular or other extra-academic activities. High schools host “College Fairs” by inviting
colleges and universities to meet with parents and students under the same roof,
discussing admissions, financial aid and the benefits of college. Many school districts offer college prep
tools and even subsidize costs of the various exams that students need to get
through - such as PSATs, SATs, ACTs and AP exams.
All of this support is, however, heavily focused on steps 2
and 3 of the college decision: how to finance your college and how you complete
your application for success. There is
not a whole lot of institutional support about the all-important step 1: Researching
options to identify a college that best meets your needs.
As we said before, which location and region you choose, the
college you select, what you study, how long you take to graduate, how you
limit costs (and borrowing), what career you pursue, whether or not you get an
internship, which industry you choose to work in, how soon you can get a
meaningful job after graduation - each can determine if going to college is
worth it.
Our promise is to empower you with as much high-quality, ethical and free advice as is possible via this website. But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.
Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors and involves a fee. Please contact us for more information.
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