Being Ready For College Essay

The process of having to find a college or a university to attend is a huge challenge, and a stressful process. Even though I don’t have to worry about getting into a University for another four more years, I stress of the thought every day. Will I have a high enough GPA? What about my SAT scores? Do my parents even have money saved away for me and tuition? What do I want to do with my life? Thoughts like these run through my mind and stress me out all the time it seems, but I’m learning how to take things one step at a time. The first step to insure I have a good future for myself is making sure I have goals set and locked, once I know what I want to do with my future it helps me plan ahead better, but saying this is easier said then

To many high school students, college seems like a far away land, a mysterious place where everyone wants to be yet not many know how to get there. As children, our parents tell us how much time we have to think about college, and that it is too far down the line to think about. The truth is it is never too early to think about your future. I, like many people, put little thought into my future career and now am lost in an unfortunate mix of indecision and anxiety. Not knowing where you want to be in the future is a hard burden to bear. Many of us tend to find out that we only know what we do not want, not what we actually do want. Do we want to be poor? Absolutely not. Do we want a boring job? Of course we don’t. We all want our

College 101 has been a very informative class. It has taught me a lot about college and the changes you have to make while attending college. I learned a lot about certain programs that the school offers, I knew nothing about these programs before I took this class and I probably never would have known anything about them if I never would have taken this class. In this class I have learned about three important concepts that can be very useful throughout my college years to come. I think time management, determining values and balancing lifestyles are the three most important concepts you need to help you succeed in college.

Determining college readiness is an essential part in determining who will qualify as a good candidate for admission into a college or a university. The last thing that colleges want is for students to qualify for admission and drop out, this affects drop out rate and graduation rate. According Robin Chait and Andrea Venezia (2009),

After graduating high school, no one prepares you for college. Most kids when they are finished with high school don’t even fantasize about going back to school. I have always wanted to go to college ever since I was a young kid. I also had dreams of myself going to college, but in my dreams, everything was picture perfect. In reality, college has been very challenging for me. No one tells you about the adjustments and complications that you would have to face to become a successful college student.

A fork in the road only appears as such when both paths are seen as viable options; yet, once one path becomes seen as the only one, the other devolves into a deviation. Where the aberration would require justification to travel down, the perceived correct course would require justification to not travel down. This is precisely how the false question of attending college was presented to me: it was a matter of when not if. Upon inheriting white looking skin, a middle class family, and a pat on the back for bringing home white sheets of papers with little red “A”s written in the top right corner, it was ascertained that I was to be a productive and successful engineer after paying for college with hard-won scholarship money. In short, there were several socio-economic factors that contributed to my eventual position in college.

If college really is the road to success, then why doesn’t everyone go to college for knowing they will be successful in the long run? This question is something that almost every high school student goes through when they are in their final years of high school. Whether it is taking exhausting advanced placement classes, studying for an upcoming ACT test, working to receive community service hours, or filling out and ultimately submitting an application in hopes of getting accepted into college, being admitted to college can be an excruciating task at hand. Being a hard-working, focused high school student I find that college is the path that all teens should consider walking upon because of the opportunities of being more successful financially and mentally are more likely, the legacy and positive behavior can be looked up to by my future children, and the expenses that many fear of college will ultimately be nullified after some time once work has immense post-college.

Moving my whole life to the United States was a special challenge to me. I had to be familiar with life style, environment, education system, culture, and tradition which are different from my country Iraq. Before I moved to the United States, I spent three years in a university in Iraq; however, these years in the university did not help me to get to the college level in the United States. It was like I needed to start from zero. I did not give up because I have a goal to be a doctor. Therefore, I took ESOL classes, passed Texas Admission Test, and now I am in my Junior year.

In today’s modern society, college signifies much more than just pursuing a two or four year degree. College ready means that students need to be prepare for college level education to be able to succeed or do well in credit-bearing college courses without the need of remedial coursework. Being college ready refers to the level of knowledge and skills students are required to possess in certain subject areas such as mathematics, reading and English and to be successful in any and all future accomplishments. Students need to have good communication, critical thinking and problem solving skills to be able to succeed in college.

After being up all night working on your third paper this week, you walk into an auditorium that is packed to the brim with hundreds of other students. Over the past few years in your old high school, that averaged fifteen to twenty students per classroom, the teachers told you that they had prepared you for college. However, in a survey carried out by campustechnology.com, most college professors find high school graduates unready for college. According to the United States Department of Education, the United States is home to almost thirty thousand high schools, however, they are all useless if they do not adequately prepare our students for college and the journey that awaits them.

It is often said, that high school, prepares a student for college. For certain, a student is being prepared, but only for what the world has to offer, and that is making choices on what to pursue. Certainly, most people would concur with this statement. But, the fact to consider is, that high school does not prepare a student for the major difference in the challenge.

What has my journey to graduation been like for me? My journey has been a crazy, fun-filled learning adventure. I met many goals and accomplishments I set for myself but I also faced some challenges on the way. For example, I finally met my goal of graduating with a 4.6 GPA and maintaining it. Also, I accomplished completing my last four years of grade school and now I am on the way to college. My last year has been interesting and there are many goals, accomplishments and challenges I can reflect on.

College is a competitive environment; in order to succeed in it a student needs certain skills. Those skills can only be learned. A college professor mentioned that there five basic rules that need to be followed in order to become a good student: study, do all the homework and the assigned reading, attend class, and, most importantly, develop self-discipline and time management 1. In the following lines, a detailed analysis of those different steps will be done. So, let’s get started.

Different people wish to attain kinds of success but in order to fulfill your first success, college is a very important step and part to start with. Besides you need to make the necessary scarifies to accomplish you goals, your motivation and studies are also very important because your studies are dependent upon your motivation. A goal of this kind will determining the direction and degree of your motivation for itself and it can also make the different between success and failure.

Yet, the education does not stop at middle school, for high school really puts all the basic skills from elementary and middle school to work as the assignments and the exams become more challenging. We do not only learn about reading, writing, history, and math, we learn about the people around us as we associate with different personalities, and as we see what we have grown up to be and what we want to be later in life. Accordingly, the high school years are a time when teachers emphasize the importance of graduating and attending college in order to have a “succesful future.”