Georgetown University professor Anthony Carnevale concluded that many of our top high school students don’t succeed in college.
“Each year there are 560,000 students who graduate in the top half of their high school class — and have the test scores that show they could succeed in college — but who fail to earn a two- or four-year degree within eight years of graduating,” Carnevale said.
Matt Messinger, a former college admissions specialist and founder of ThroughCollege, LLC an Internet-based business dedicated to helping students prepare for college, believes this is a major problem but a fixable one.
“When you stop and think about it, it’s incredible, 43 of every 100 students do not graduate in 6 years,” Messinger said.
Messinger is one of the founders of ThroughCollege, LLC an Internet-based business dedicated to helping students prepare for college. In an online seminar for Inside the School Helping all Students Navigate the Path to College, he outlined six of the many activities educators and parents can do to help students on the challenging path to college. The six steps review a personal lifeline, values, “what’s my calling”, financial aid, standardized tests and thought mapping success.
The first classroom management plan can include creating a lifeline. A lifeline is a timeline that includes all of the significant events in a student’s life. Messinger says by having a student create their own lifeline it forces them to think about what events are important to them.
“It is important for students to indicate significant events in their lives. It could be positive or negative,” Messinger said. “Sometime kids in high school don’t think about these perspectives.”
These important timeline events will reveal to the students if post-secondary education is right for them.
Messinger’s second step is to identify the values and discover if they match up with the college experience. This activity gives students the opportunity to think about what matters to them.
“[Do they value] freedom, family faith, loyalty? This is a hard activity for adults to use. It helps students understand who they are. The better they understand who they are – the better they will be able to stay true to who they are. Make students develop their own thoughts and think about where they want to be,” Messinger said.
Students weigh the benefits of valuing time and valuing money. Studies show that college-educated people have a higher average yearly income than those who have a high school diploma.
“If you graduate from college, over the course of your entire career, you’re likely to earn $1 million more than someone who’s only graduated from high school,” Messinger said.
But in this economy, having a college degree isn’t a guarantee of an income. In many cases, it’s a guarantee that the student will have thousands of dollars of debt.
“Two out of three students leave college with debt,” Messinger said. “If you’re coming out of school with $20,000 in debt, it’s going to influence your career decision because you’re going to need to pay off those loans starting six months after you graduate. This is a lot of money that we’re talking about here.”
A college education isn’t unrealistic, even for students who are intimidated by the high cost and the loans. Messinger reviewed ways to help pay for the large burden of college tuition without waiting for a full-time job.
“Students can get on-campus jobs. They can get loans. They can get scholarships. And as I mentioned, many scholarships go unclaimed because people don’t even apply for them. There are millions of dollars each year that go untaken, in terms of college grants,” he said.
Messinger finished his thoughts on financial aid by advising educators to begin the college process early with students and don’t make the process seem overwhelming. Reviewing financial aspects of college makes a great life skills lesson plan as well.
“To sum up the financial aid activity, we really want to be realistic about how money plays a role in selection of a college. But we also want to be very optimistic that the students and parents can go forward and find the resources they need to get students to college,” Messinger said.
The financial concerns are real, but so, too are the students’ concerns about college entrance exams.
A big part of the college admittance process depends on the students’ test scores. Many students can put too much pressure – or not enough – pressure on themselves. A lesson plan objective for teachers should include helping the students deal with test anxiety.
“These tests are important, let’s be honest about that – colleges do look at applicants based on the results on these tests. And so it is nerve-wracking and it’s worth having some anxiety over it. Standardized tests are very anxiety-inducing but it’s important as a college counselor and educator to separate the tests from the individual,” Messinger said. “But I think the key thing to remember to reduce anxiety on the standardized tests is that it’s only one component of what colleges look at and it does not define who a student is. And this is all about creating your routine and trying to reduce anxiety around taking a particular test.”
The academic pressure and focus does not stop once students receive the college acceptance letters. In fact, it is just the beginning. Those who work hard and complete the acceptance process should prepare to work even harder in their college classes so they can earn their diplomas.
“An important step is having students realize that, when they get into college, that’s just the beginning of their journey; that’s the beginning of where they’re headed. We want students to look through college,” Messinger said. “That day when I get my diploma, I want to have a plan to get a job that I like. I want to have the knowledge and skills to get that job, and I want to be excited.”
Parents who help their kids with the college process also need to be ready for the students to make their own decisions. However, parents’ ideas about college and students’ ideas don’t always match. Some parents might be pushing an underachieving college and not be aware of it.
“The transition to college is actually, I would argue, a right of passage in our society where students begin making their own decisions,” Messinger said.
Parents also need to be tough with the college discussion. That may mean they need to provide assertive discipline canter to their children.
Life after high school is a critical decision time in a young person’s life. Educators, parents and students all need to go through the process of deciding if college is right for a person. Messinger cautioned educators against convincing reluctant students to attend college. He shared a story of a student that he personally helped to get into a major university, only to see the student attend for just one year.
“No matter how badly we, as educators, want the student to realize how smart they are and how much good they can do with their lives, it’s really hard for us to inculcate that into them if they just don’t want to buy it,” Messinger said.
These are students and young adults, after all. Their ideas about life and their values don’t always mesh with those of adults.
“Understand these are 17-18-19-year-old students and they have the right to change their mind, and that’s normal, too. That being said, again, the more that you can think about this in high school, the better everyone’s going to be,” Messinger said.
Inside the School provides practical resources for middle and secondary teachers online (http://www.insidetheschool.com) in free weekly e-zines, online seminars, articles and printable reports.
