Answers to Your College Questions

Posted by Dr. Marcia Y. Cantarella on Monday, 24 December 2012 in New College Parent

The first year of college can be overwhelming. First-year students are facing a lot of new things and are forced to separate from familiar territory. They have to make new friends, learn new spaces, live or hang out with different people, eat unfamiliar foods, discover new ways of learning, and follow new rules. That is a lot of new at one time.

Many studies show that freshman year is the time when students are most likely to drop out of college, and many consider transferring (though most don’t). There are various factors at play: many students are dealing with homesickness—missing friends, family, and the familiar—while others struggle academically or socially. But this is just a part of the college experience. Typically, by second semester, they surface just fine.

Posted by Dr. Marcia Y. Cantarella on Monday, 03 December 2012 in College

Today’s job market is a fast-changing, information and service-based environment. To thrive in this setting, companies have become less focused on finding employees with specialized expertise as they once were. Instead, they look for skills that are applicable to all areas of the workforce—particularly in critical thinking and communication. This means they typically hire good team players with excellent people skills who can learn quickly. Luckily, many areas of study will enable you to develop those skills.

For example, if you major in people-centered subjects—such as anthropology, sociology, or psychology, to name a few—you will learn quite a bit about human behavior. Studying human behavior will help you to build people skills that will be useful when collaborating with colleagues in the workplace.

Posted by Dr. Marcia Y. Cantarella on Monday, 19 November 2012 in College

Good grades are very important for your future, whether you decide to work after college or to go to graduate school. However, that does not mean you should be spending all of your time in the library. It is also important to balance your schedule with social and extracurricular activities that you enjoy.

Posted by Dr. Marcia Y. Cantarella on Monday, 24 September 2012 in College

First you need to be sure you understand the basis of the grade. Recheck the syllabus to see how the grades are determined.

Posted by Dr. Marcia Y. Cantarella on Wednesday, 05 September 2012 in College Admissions

First, you should understand that college training has a much greater significance today than it did earlier. More than a century ago, work most often involved physical labor. As the twentieth century progressed, however, more and more work became administrative or managerial, though physical skills were still in demand. Following World War II and in the 1950s in particular, as a bigger share of the population had access to free public high schools, workers developed skills more exclusively suited for office work. At present we are clearly in a service- and knowledge-based economy, where the skills developed through a college education are the ones driving both economical and personal growth.

But is now the right time for you to attend, and what schools might best suit your circumstances? Getting through college successfully may actually depend on your being at the right school in the first place. The College Board, the preeminent organization connecting students to colleges, lists nearly four thousand accredited colleges and universities. The options are nearly limitless. You should choose based on who you are and what is right for you (not on what your parents did or didn’t do, or what your friends are doing).