Expert: Ron - 1/4/2001

Question
I'm only a Junior at my school and I don't know what I should do in life. I have been thinking what to do like a teacher or a computer programming.
What should I look for in a college?
I've been thinking about some but I don't know what's important
I don't know.
StarLight6435@aol.com

Answer
Having struggled through the same questions myself I would say right off the bat, no matter what college you go to its not going to help you decide what you want to do with your life.  

My advise is to see a career counselor or perhaps your school guidance counselor can help you.  You should really consider taking a skills/interest test to help you focus on what you like and what you don't like.  There's no guarantee that it will help you find a career that you will like, but generally, people tend to like what they do, and do it well if they are generally interested in it.  

Regarding college choices, if you are not sure what you want to do, then I would recommend visiting different colleges and see how you like them.  If you don't feel comfortable there, you are probably not going to like it and transfer or quit college altogether.

Basically I would recommend a college that has modern facilities.  Learning computer science/programming on computers that are 20 years old is not going to help you a great deal.  Large public universities, generally speaking, have the best equipment versus a small private college, but that is not always the case.

You also want to consider class size.  If you are uncomfortable with large crowds, or don't like the fact that the professor probably won't know you from Adam, then maybe a large university is not for you.  Professors generally don't teach freshman level classes at large universities, typically Graduate Students do the bulk of the teaching.  Classes are very large at times, as many as 200 people in a class.

On the downside, small colleges generally cost about 2 to 3 times more in tuition, and don't offer the same variety of classes.  They often offer a class once or twice a year, maybe 2 or 3 sections at a time.  So if for whatever reason you can't fit it in your schedule, you have to wait a year for it to come around again, or take the class at another university/college, and have the credit transferred back to your home institution.

Thats about it for now.  If you have any more specific questions, I'll try to answer them as best as I can.  Hope this was helpful

Ron