High School Student: Any College Advice?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hey guys, hope you all are doing alright!

I’ve been reading threads on this forum and Cecil’s posts for some time now, although I must be in the lower age bracket of this site’s users. I’m only a high school student.

I’m here to ask for your opinions on colleges. You all come across as very educated and have obviously had the chance to experience college. Some of kid’s may even be in college or in a similar situation to myself.

I plan on getting into consulting as an adult. So a strong Management or Economic program would be ideal. I think I have a really fair chance of getting into some competitive schools. I have a strong GPA, course load, standardized test scores, and community leadership roles.

My major dilemma will not be getting into a good school, but it will be paying for said schools. I live in Florida. Our best in-state public is University of Florida. I could go there relatively cheap. I’m just not sure if it’s the best I can do and it’s just too familiar (my mom is an alum and we always head up during football season).

Alternatively, I could go out of state (public or private) and take on some debt. But I believe my earning potential will be much higher at these schools. My number one school is Michigan’s Ross business school. I’m going to also throw a few applications out there and see if I could possibly get into Columbia.

So, in your humble opinion, should I try and take on some debt or play it safe and stay in-state but potentially miss out on some opportunities.

By the way, I have no interest in going for a Grad degree right after college. If I ever wanted one I would go for it well down the road.

Please let me know if you Dopers have any knowledge that could help me!

2

Advice is best suited to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

3

My advice: Look more towards maximizing your happiness rather than maximizing your earning potential. UF is a plenty prestigious school. But if it turns out to feel right to you and Columbia doesn’t, but you pick Columbia because it’s all fancy and prestigious and you think that’s where the megabucks are, well, you just took on a bunch of debt and made yourself miserable in the process, all in pursuit of what, exactly? A possibility at a few extra bucks down the road?

Education should be about learning some awesome things in your area of study, enjoying yourself, and learning how to be an adult. Maximizing “[your] earning potential” like you’re a sentient mutual fund is a fantastic prescription to a miserable life.

4

Look into honors business programs at good state schools. Lots of top management consulting firms recruit out of these, and all that matters is that first job. Apply widely, then worry about paying for it. Financial aid can surprise you.

5

You mentioned the business school at Michigan. Now, it does offer a bachelor’s degree in business administration, but if you’re interested in consulting, you’ll almost certainly need an MBA or other advanced degree. You can go anywhere for the undergrad degree, and as long as you have the grades and a good GMAT score, you can get into a good business school for the MBA. Also, don’t assume that the University of Florida will be cheaper than schools elsewhere. The top private schools can offer very generous financial aid packages. So apply in-state and out-of-state, see which schools accept you and then look at the out-of-pocket cost.

And not to discourage you but you mentioned “a strong GPA, course load, standardized test scores, and community leadership roles”. When applying for college you will be competing against literally thousands of other high school students with similar or better qualifications than yours.

Finally, as a high school student, why do you think you want to go into “consulting”? Do you even know what that means?

6

Good on you for asking for advice. This is a very important moment that can often determine the outcome of the rest of your life. This may not directly answer your question but hopefully it helps you figure out what you want in life, what career you should seek, and in turn, what to study at college.
The happy life quiz:

1) The material happiness list: Close your eyes and imagine (within reason) your ideal future self living in your future home. Think of all the material/tangible things you can see around you. Do you have a lot of clothes? Maybe you don’t? DO you have a lot of electronic gadgets? Maybe not? On a dot list, write down the top 10 to 20 things that you want most for your future self. Be specific.

2) The non-material happiness list: Think of all the non-material things you want in life in order to be happy. Write these down next to your list of material things. You can be vague/abstract e.g. “comfort”, “free time”, “love”, “pride”.

3) The links: See if any of those material things can achieve or help obtain any of your non-material desires. If they do, draw a line linking them (you can link multiple things to one thing, and vice versa). If any of the non-material desires don’t have a link to a material thing, write down a few thoughts about how you might achieve that non-material desire.

Now that you’ve exposed what sort of lifestyle you want, it’s easier to determine what careers would be a good match for you (assuming you want to “work to live”, not “live to work”).

I suggest you go to an online job search engine and look through the job descriptions of as many jobs as you can. Try to be as broad as possible. Don’t even use a keyword when you search. Just search by category e.g. finance, customer service, human resources, engineering, construction, management, property etc.

Once you’ve narrowed down a few different jobs that you MIGHT be interested in. Google: a day in the life of [insert job/position].

Read as widely as you can about those jobs that you short-listed. Make sure you pay particular attention to employment prospects, growth and average salary.

Once you’ve figured out what jobs you could potentially do in the future, THEN you can go back and figure out what course/degree would help you get there.

TLDR: Figure out what makes you happy, what job you want to do in the future, THEN what college to go to.

7

If you are at all unsure, spend the least amount on college. That’s what a consultant would tell you. I suggest for now you broaden your experiences. The best way to discover your passion is to do things. You can talk to people to get ideas, but when you are actually doing something you’ll know for sure when you’ve found your passion.

8

Connor writes:

> Our best in-state public is University of Florida.

No, it’s not. It’s New College in Sarasota:

9

Not sure how US college admissions work with respect to ranking your choices - how much lattitude you have to weigh up offers from different institutions etc. But I would go baws out for Columbia, with UF as a nice fall back position. If you’ve got the credentials, and you can wear the debt, then the prestige and quality of Columbia will carry weight in the field you are aiming towards.

I’m in an entirely different field (scientist), but ISTM that both science and the MBA track share the feature of where you train being overwhelmingly important. A strong performance at Columbia undergrad would appear to set you up for a top management school, assuming that 4 yrs in NY has not made you repent and see the error of your consulting ways.

10

If you are serious about business, you will need an MBA sooner rather than later, and the best route is to go to a solid, affordable state school for undergrad and the best business school you can get into for the MBA. It makes little sense to go to a 2nd tier school, especially if it is expensive. Either go to a top-5 school, or the best public university you can get into. There is little that is useful in the in-between, unless you have some special need for a specific kind of college.

Undergrad business degrees are a dime a dozen. I believe it’s the top major right now, and it doesn’t really say a lot about you or what you can do. The best thing you can do for yourself is work outside of school as an undergrad, do as many prestigious internships as you can, and generally build that work experience as aggressively as you can. That is what will eventually get you hired. A business undergrad fulfills the “this person needs a degree of some type” requirement like any degree (though it’s seen as somewhat vocational) but it’s not going to get you beyond that in and of itself.

11

Here’s what I would do:

  1. Take some time off. A year, two years, three years, it doesn’t matter. Explore different fields and different places and find out what it really is that you want to do for the rest of your life. Find your ultimate “non-job”, a job that you enjoy so much that you’d do it for free. You have to decide: is making money more important than your happiness?

  2. Ask yourself what your return on investment would be for college. Is it worth getting into $50k debt, plus-or-minus some? Would you actually learn anything that you could not learn on your own? Do you even want to go to college, or do you feel obligated?

12

My son went to a small state school in Illinois. It was cheap. His degree is in accounting then he got his CPA. He had very little school debt. At 30 years old he took over the accounting department of a medium sized city. He makes more money that I do.

My daughter went to college at a very small Texas state college. She got a sports scholarship and became a mechanical engineer. Very little in the way of school loans and is making a good paycheck.

I joined the military and took night and weekend classes. The military paid as much as 90% of my tuition and I went economical schools including community colleges at first. I make good money now and had no school loans.

My niece joined ROTC and is becoming a doctor. While she does have school loans for her BS degree, her schooling for becoming an MD is paid for by the military. She has to pay it back with 8 years of military service, but that will be at a pretty good pay grade.

While getting a tip-top CEO job might require an Ivy League education, the vast majority of jobs can be had with a good education and work ethic plus a little initiative.

The best advice to is pick a career that (1) you may enjoy, (2) has real potential for making a living, and (3) be willing to change career paths if an opportunity arises.

If it’s fun to study, it probably isn’t going to pay well. I.E. too many history majors out there for the small number of jobs. Something not ‘fun’ like accounting and engineering has more potential.

I was an aircraft mechanic in the military but decided that becoming a high school teacher might be a good career when I got out of the USAF. So I got a BS in Education. But then the internet boom was starting so I switched gears to IT. Good choice for me. I still made use of me Education degree by teaching IT courses at a community college for many years.

13

I would suggest Florida. Debt from your undergraduate and post-graduate degrees can be crippling when first starting out.

I have a degree from a public university that is lower on the rankings scale than Florida, and I work right next to someone that graduated from Stanford. Once my employer could see that I was smart and a good worker, the school meant nothing.

14

It’s already been said multiple times in this thread, but I’ll repeat it anyway: it really doesn’t matter what undergraduate school you go to. All that crap that counselors, recruiters, and your friends tell you about going to a “prestigious” school is bullshit. The only factors that really matter are choosing a school you can afford and where you feel comfortable; you’re going to living there for the better part of 4 years, make sure you like it.

15

Stanford is a good example of how an elite private school might be cheaper than a public university. “Under the Stanford program established in 2008, parents making less than $60,000 a year are not expected to pay tuition or to contribute to the costs of room and board and other expenses. Families making less than $100,000 a year do not pay tuition. Families with significantly higher incomes may also qualify for assistance depending on their individual circumstances.” A lot of public universities offer no tuition assistance.

16

According to the above cite, only about 58% of students complete a four-year bachelor’s degree within six years. You’ll want to be one of them, and ideally you’ll want one within four years, which will mean less money owed.
At some schools it’s difficult to be able to get into all the required courses you’ll need within four years. Do some research.

Also (sigh, yes, I know, you don’t want to hear this, nobody does) but it’s not necessary to get drunk every single weekend, still less so every single night, and yet quite a few students seem to think it is. That doesn’t help your GPA, and may even prevent you from graduating at all.

17

my understanding is where you do your undergrad degree is not very important as long as you finish and graduate. what matters in the working world is more how effective, reliable, punctual and easy to work with you are. I’ve known several people with better grades and better schools than I who lacked my abilities at prioritization and time management. those skills matter more.

if you are seeking a professional degree (jd, mba, etc) then your school matters. where you do your PhD can matter too, esp if you are looking to be a professor. but for a BA or BS I don’t think it matters where you go.

In my opinion you’d be better off saving 100k and going to the in state public school. when you factor in interest you will end up paying double your student loans on a 20 year payment plan.

18

As has been said, the school you get your MBA from will be far more important than the school you get your BA or BS from.

Go to a decent affordable state school. Consider an out of state college that is affordable (via reciprocity or because its cheap) simply because living in a different part of the country is horizon expanding. For a really frugal experience, live at home and do community college for a few years (although if you can get into Columbia, you’ll get plenty of free rides from mid-tier good schools - perhaps even private schools if what you want is the small liberal arts undergrad).

One of my former peers had his degree from Harvard - I didn’t have one at all at the time - we had the same title and made the same money. Both of us moved into consulting. (IT consulting, not business consulting) and have crossed paths several times.

19

The first two years of college, pretty much everywhere, are exactly the same courses…the General Education courses - science, math, English, humanities. Thus, it really doesn’t matter if you go to a community college or Harvard for those first two years - which, by the way, those first two years are when a whole bunch of students, especially those living on campus in dorms, flunk out due to lack of study, too much partying, lack of motivation.

It is the last two years of college that most people hit their major field of study.

So, you might want to go anywhere local for the first two years, and then transfer.

And I would agree that a Masters Degree will be vitally important, so if you got your bachelor’s anywhere, getting a Masters from a more prestigious university would probably be wiser.

Sure - a degree from a top ten school is always a source of pride and might open a few doors, but it is by no means a guarantee. Graduating at the top end of your class from any really good university will also carry a lot of weight, and will certainly make entry into a Masters program a lot easier at any of the top schools as well.

So, unless you have trunks of money in your basement, I would probably stick to the best Florida school you can find and either transfer your Junior year, or go through the Bachelors and then search the top schools for a really good Masters program…icing on the cake and far, far cheaper route to get there.

BTW…coming from Florida, you do know that many of those “cool” schools up north are also damned cold in the winter…go visit in January and see how hot you are to trot up there for four years!

20

Wow. No wonder high school students are confused.

You should pretty much ignore all the anecdotal stuff. Yeah, Bob from accounting has no college degree and his intern went to Harvard. So what? It’s a different world now, and you’re going to need every edge you can get to stand out. If you have the aptitude to gain entrance into Columbia, don’t go to a community college just to save money. It’s even harder to get into some elite schools as a transfer than an undergrad because retention rates are so high. Also, don’t go to a shitty undergrad school under the assumption that a great grad school will even everything out, because you might suck at college and not even get into a top grad school. I’d take what I can get now; consulting firms hire tons of undergrads and you really need to focus on getting your foot in the door.

If I were you, I’d go to the best school I’d could get into, with one caveat. You have to have a realistic idea about how much money you will pay each month post-graduation toward your debt, and you must be comfortable with this amount even assuming you are working a job that pays near the lower end of the wage scale. Don’t take out a shitload of loans and assume you’ll be making six figures so everything will work out. You won’t.

I don’t know why you want to work as a consultant, and I’m not certain you really know what a consultant does (not a criticism, I went to law school and had no fucking idea what lawyers really did), but FWIW, I work at a consulting firm and we don’t recruit undergrads at U Florida. I’m not sure many top firms do.