Getting Ready for College and for Your Adult Life!

Yesterday, I was involved in organizing an event to help college-bound high-school students and their parents to help them better understand the college applications and selection process. This event involved presentations by an expert who was involved in the actual Ivy-league-college admissions process; parents, who saw their children get into the colleges of their choice; and who had just graduated and started a new job.

Throughout the session there were some intense questions, both from parents and students, who came to attend this forum. I am compelled to write this blog to disabuse the notion of the importance of a particular college or university you attend and the degree you get to start your professional life. I am summarizing my learning from this event for those who want to rethink this whole process and its importance in your (and your child’s) life:

1. There are over 3,500 institutions of higher learning in the U.S. Most attendees in our forum were talking about attending the named universities and colleges: Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Brown, and others.
2. Getting your child in a top school gives the parents bragging rights. The actual adult success of those attending these expensive and highfalutin schools is questionable. If you look at the value these expensive colleges provide compared to the lesser-known good schools, it is worth a pause and some reflection. Also, it is much easier to get into such schools.
3. Each school has its own admissions criteria. It is best to know what that is through research and see if the values align in how your application will stack up in the submissions cataract. One of the great differentiators is your essay. Make sure that this captures your personal narrative and has soul to it. Do not merely look up information on Wikipedia and write something.
4. Grades matter in high school. In addition to improving your ranking, they provide you the discipline of committing to a purpose. They also help you provide some choices in your college selection. So, work hard to achieve good grades, but also focus on other activities to create a good balance in your development and growth. In college grades matter less. What matters is how you develop your personality and what you learn. Learning has little to do with good grades.
5. The half-life of the learning for someone with an undergraduate degree is about five years, for someone with a master’s degree is three, and for someone with a PhD, even less. What does that mean? This implies that learning how to learn is much more important that what you learn! So, knowledge and your perspective are more important than your grades in college
6. Studies have repeatedly shown that the correlation between IQ and grades is over 95%, but high IQ and adult success correlate only about 20%! Other Qs matter much more in adult life: EQ, PQ, CQ, and XQ (Emotional, Political, Cultural, and Contextual intelligences respectively). Only IQ is innate; the others are learned skills. Now you know where the 20% correlation comes from!
7. After getting your degree what matters more than your grades is where you did your internships and what relationships you developed. The internships often result in full-time jobs and careers that define much of the initial adult success.
8. Developing mastery in one area in the first phase of your career is critical. In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell mentions spending 10,000 hours to master whatever it is that you choose to conquer. This mastery will serve you for the rest of your life, even if you do not stay in that area after you mastered it!
9. Parents, do not force your kids to vicariously pursue the life that you missed out on! Let them pick their passion and support them the best way you can, without forcing your opinion on them. Some do not know what their passion is until much later in life and there is nothing wrong with that.
10. Do not compare where you are in your life with your other “friends.” Life has unique lessons planned for each of us and there is no point in comparing where you are with others around you. Each must seek their own dream, pursuing their own path, and achieve it!

Good luck!