College search for undecided students

bessie
Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:00:49 +0000

When my oldest son, who had no idea what he wanted to study, was being recruited for an athletic scholarship, he would meet with the academic counselors at various schools. The best advice one gave him was to buy a school catalogue with the classes/ class descriptions listed. (Yes, they are online, but you need the actual book for this) Then she told him to keep it around the house (this was when he was beginning his junior year of HS) and just browse through the classes once in a while, circling the things that sounded interesting and crossing out the types of classes he would hate without regard to majors or whether he was picking six different departments. This was very helpful in a number of ways. Later, I made it a point to get the catalogue for every school my younger son was interested in and had him do the same thing. Doing that totally influenced my younger son’s college decision in a very surprising way. For an undecided kid (and so few KNOW what they really want), the act of choosing potential classes helps them see if a school has the kinds of classes he wants and how many of them are available. This was a very practical, low stress way for my kids to think about different schools and how they would fit in there academically. I just kept the catalogues and a marker near where they tended to sit around when they were bored and they just picked it up whenever they felt like it.