Purpose: Everyone is obsessed with getting into college, but no one tells you what to do when you get there
- The goal of my plan is to identify people who can help you so that you don’t need to do everything by yourself
The real value of college comes into play if you have a general idea of how to make connections and find people to help you
- Just focusing on classes is one of the hardest things you can do to make it in life
- Employers are looking for skills on your resume
- This is especially important since AI programs are designed to scan for specific skills based on the job description
Note: This advice can also be used in high school or under as well as any type of professional program
What is college?
- It’s a place of concentrated talent
- Easier to find people to help you
- The value of investing in college skyrockets when you know what to
What depends on you?
- What do you have to do outside of class to make yourself successful?
- #1 priority is to get to know professors and classmates that you feel comfortable around
- Lose benefits if you “do it by yourself”
- Why should you get to know your professors?
- Chance to share your knowledge about certain topics if you want someone to talk to
- However, there are certain benefits that you can get that will greatly help you later in life
- These benefits will set you up for the future much better than if you ignore them
Letters of recommendation
The best example I can give you is letters of recommendation
- Even if you don’t know what you want in life yet, having people who can write these is greatly helpful
- It’ll be much harder to get into a grad school or med/law/nursing/ etc if you don’t have any recommendations
Usually, you’ll need 2-3 letters of recommendation
Research opportunities
Key deciding factor in getting employed as well as getting into grad school
- Prior research experience is seen as more important than GPA, especially in the professional world
- #1 question that I was asked when applying for jobs was “Do you have any research experience.”
To get research opportunities, getting to know your professors is the best way to do it
- Direct communication with your professor is the best option because the professor gets to know you
- Also, a lot of people operate from the base assumption that you have to have high grades to get research opportunities
- However, this assumption was formed because no one actually knows what the standards of the professors were when selecting people to work with them
- Some professors may let you work even if your GPA is currently lacking
Opportunities outside of college
Internships
Some professors may have connections outside of college
- Internship opportunities are critical for getting into professional environments
- Direct connection and advice from people in your field
- Gain an understanding of the companies in the area (Benefit even if you don’t get an internship)
Note: I put internships lower priority than research since professors are usually more connected with people in their departments
Easier entrance into graduate school + rapport with potential mentors
- It can be scary to go into graduate school without any knowledge about the faculty
- However, the uncertainty of not knowing who you’ll work with can be largely avoided if you have professors that you like
- Oftentimes the faculty teaching the graduate courses are also responsible for teaching a lower-level course
- If there’s a handful of professors that you enjoy being around, it can be quite easy to decide on where to go for graduate school
- In addition, colleges see undergraduates from the same university extremely positively; as a result, it can be quite easy to get accepted into the program
1. How do you get to know your professor?
- Go to class
- This guide will teach you some aspects of making the class period more useful
- Sit at the front
- Large lecture halls make you hard to spot unless you’re near the front
- Try to answer questions in class
- They’ll start to recognize your face and name better if you participate in class, especially in crowded lecture halls
- It also breaks a lot of awkward silence when the professor asks something and no one tries to answer
- Professor’s attitude towards the students + how seriously they take teaching
- Does this person seem like someone you’d want to be around?
- Someone who can’t teach well is also a strong indicator of someone being poor to work with
- Talk to the professor after class
- Chance to ask questions about the course material, what to expect, their research background, etc…
- If the professor is very kind, you can discuss your college plans with them for some guidance
- Visit their office hours
- However, office hours are usually the perfect time to get 1 on 1 time with the professor, especially if the professor is busy directly after class
- It’s common to only focus on the course material while missing out on any opportunities the professor may have for you
What should you do research/get an internship in?
- Prioritize anything that is highly valued in the field that you’re going into
- Job descriptions can help guide you here as well as asking professionals who work in the field
- However, getting some experience is better than nothing at all
What is the purpose of research/internships?
- A lot of people see these as an addition to their resume, but these are the most important parts
- Most jobs will be hiring based on direct skills, and having the skills they’re searching for can get you the job even without many years of experience
2. Communicating with others around you
- Try to see who you often feel most comfortable around
- People like this are irreplaceable in helping you get comfy in the college environment
- Practice getting to know people in your classes
- You’ll see a similar group of people in all your classes, especially in the freshman and sophomore years
- You can find out what courses are required by navigating the website for the specific colleges that you’re applying to
- For example, the majors chemistry, biology, and biochemistry, are required to take similar types of introductory chem courses
- You can have a lot of chances to build relationships with people since you’re in the same room
- Talk about your schedules
- You can take the time in-between classes to build relationships with the people you’ve met
- The cafeteria is an example of somewhere you can go to have conversations over lunch
- Help each other out in class
- It’s quite common for groups of people to go to office hours for help
- If someone is absent due to being sick, it’s easy to ask your friend to ask a few questions for you
- See what you can get
- There’s no way to predict what you’ll get after you start talking to people
- You might become best friends or nothing much will happen
How do you start a conversation with others around you?
There are a ton of basic questions that you can ask to get to know the people around you more
- What’s your major?
- Easy conversation starter since people in your classes will be in different majors, especially if you’re in an elective course
- It can give you some idea of what the other person is interested in
- Where did you go to high school?
- There will be people coming from various high schools around the area or the country
- You can hear a lot of stories since the experiences between high schools are so varied
- Are there places around here that you like to go to?
- Gets you to understand what the other person knows about the area, what they like to do, and informs you about the are
- What made you want to come to this college?
- People have different reasons to come to a particular college
Common issues with communication in college
Common traps that people fall into:
Time issues
- It’s common to have people around you who are too busy with their classes to talk
- STEM majors usually have an extremely tough time interacting with others since the course load is quite high
Priorities
- Sometimes people are just too busy with college to spend their time with you
- You have to accept that this is a possibility when you talk to others
Poor guidance
- A lot of people just don’t know who to go to and what the benefits are
Solutions?
- You have to recognize that there is a lot of uncertainty that you’ll get answers to only if you communicate with people
- When you figure out who has free time, you can start to build relationships with people
- Even 5-10 minutes of interactions can lead to you enjoying your time
3. What elective courses are good to take?
How can electives benefit your communication?
- You will interact with people from different majors, increasing your chances of finding a group you enjoy
- Intro psychology
- Some basic psychology knowledge is helpful for personal development as well as understanding social interactions
- One of the most useful aspects of psychology is the cognitive biases that you’ll learn in the course, such as confirmation bias
- Intro philosophy
- Philosophy will be a critical component as you go along in your life
- Gives you a general idea of how to question your thoughts
- Intro sociology
- Sociology will help you understand how populations work and some basic knowledge of how population-based studies are conducted
- Statistics
- It’s extremely alarming that this course isn’t a requirement for quite a few majors and largely not required in high school as well
- Some basic understanding of probability and how data is collected is useful for virtually every field of study
- Note: Some graduate programs may actually require a few statistics courses as prerequisites for their courses. You may benefit from taking a few additional statistics courses as well.
Check your school website to see additional courses that might be interesting to your personal development
- Tip: Make sure to prioritize selecting courses based on good professors
- Good professors teaching your classes can lighten up your mood a lot
What depends on the people you are directly in contact with?
Everything listed above gives you the ability to initiate the conversation and the benefits of doing so
However, anything that the person does after your conversations is up to them
Here are some examples
1. Professors
- The professor has to decide who to accept into their lab/give you additional opportunities
- You have to accept that there’s a chance that you won’t be able to get an opportunity
- This is why you speak to multiple professors so that your chances of getting a position are higher
- Additionally, you can get connected with other professors who might be able to get you an opportunity
Backup: One of the primary reasons why I focused so much on letters of recommendation in this document is because you can get something out of your time
- Even if you don’t get your ideal case scenario, a letter of recommendation can effectively be a back-up
2. Colleagues
- How someone else wants to spend their free time is not in your control
- The best thing you can do is let others know that you’re available
What depends on the people you aren’t directly around?
- School mental health resources
- Check to see if there are any mental health resources available at your university if you need it
- Career Services
- They can notify you of career opportunities available in your area
- Beware that these may have high competition since other people will know about these opportunities
- Internships
- The company will decide if you get in or not
- The best you can do is find out what’s available
- Career fairs
- Career fairs can be a method of getting some face-to-face practice with recruiters
- These can also give you some idea of what companies are present in an area
- In fact, quite a few colleges will have lists of all the companies that will be present at the career fair. This is incredibly convenient since you don’t even have to go to the career fair to find out about companies around the area.
- Note: Make sure to ask the recruiters for their business card to get a contact
- Big school activities
- This includes plays, festivals, music performances, etc…
- These activities can be a great place to go with anyone you’ve recently met at college
- Activities
- There will be random events in colleges that can give unexpected rewards
- For example, colleges will often invite guest speakers while providing free food to anyone who attends
- It’s worth looking out for events like these to potentially learn something as well
- A guest speaker talking about a topic that interests you can become a contact that can help you on your journey
Concluding thoughts
Why did I make this guide?
- Certain ways of spending your time will get you results quicker
- What I’ve described in this guide is one way to spend time outside of classes
How could this help anyone else?
- Generally, each college will have different opportunities and the act of reaching out is a huge step forward
- If you follow these general principles, you’ll likely get something out of it
- For example, even if you can’t get any opportunities, the act of trying to find opportunities in your area is helpful
- If you have already connected with good people, they’ll prioritize you for any opportunities that open up, such as an opening for a lab spot
Where does the value of college come from?
- What you do with your GPA is more important than having a high GPA
- The real value of college now comes from the idea that college is a concentrated place of talent. There are people nearby you that can potentially guide you in the right direction.
- To get guidance, you have to be able to pick out specific people that can help you
- The most important part of college is the connections you build along the way
- This is where the long-term benefits of college come in
Why is there so much bad advice getting tossed around?
- This question was an extreme source of pain for me and the people who I was around
- It seemed like there were a few people who were capable of finding opportunity and everyone else was getting left behind
- Unfortunately, what I noticed was that a lot of people were not given the proper support to help find opportunities
- It felt like the general population is given the first steps on what to do in college; however, quite a few details weren’t mentioned
Answer: The reason why there’s so much bad advice is because college was a straightforward path to a job for previous generations
- The requirements to enter jobs have dramatically increased as you’re seeing with job applications now
Since there’s no way to stop this trend from reversing, the best thing that I can tell you is to maximize what you do in college
- You don’t need to spend all your free time on the thing in this document
- How much time you have depends on what year of college you are in
- Make sure to pace yourself and try to start whenever you can
Note: The information in this document is to be taken as general advice and not as rules that you have to follow