Lies People Tell You About College

Take it from someone who graduated during the Great Recession and is still unemployed: NEVER LISTEN TO OTHER PEOPLE'S ADVICE!

Literally, don't even listen when they start talking. Trust me on this one, all those ideas will gradually seep into your mind and seem to make sense. If you get too many opinions thrown at you, you'll just end up confused when it comes to decision-making time. Especially watch out for those well-meaning people who sound like they know what they're talking about. They're probably just trying to make you feel better (and/or justifying their own past decisions). In the end, no one can predict the future, and even "really good" advice won't work for a lot of people.

In no particular order, here are the Lies People Tell You About College:
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1. "It doesn't matter where you go to college."

WRONG! It does! Many colleges, even a lot of the nationally ranked and recognized ones, have few to no employer connections and little influence outside of their immediate geographic vicinity. If you can't see yourself settling down and working in a particular area for at least a few years, do not go to school there. Otherwise, you might end up browsing your college's job postings in your junior/senior year and finding no opportunities posted that are more than 10-20 miles away from your school. Also keep in mind that you could end hating any place after truly living there for awhile. Maybe you'll discover that Californians don't actually spend all day at the beach or that New Yorkers don't really spend all night at the bar sipping cocktails.

Whatever the case, you might graduate from college wanting to leave the area. When you realize that your school has no out-of-state employer connections and job postings, you'll have no choice but to place your entire future in the hands of Monster and Craigslist. On those public job sites, instead of competing with dozens (or hundreds) of college students for job openings, you'll be competing with thousands of applicants from all walks of life. The "entry level" job postings will require 2-3 years of work experience. And 90% of your competitors will have many more years of job experience than you. Good luck with that.

I had to learn this the hard way, but here are my unscientific statistics: suppose you can get one interview for every dozen or two applications submitted through your school website. On public job sites, you'll be lucky to get one or two interviews for every couple of hundred applications.




Lie #2 will have to wait until the next post because it's getting late. I need to get up early tomorrow for my summer internship. This marks my 4th internship and counting! (FML.)