What To Consider if You're Considering University — The Big Picture

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Preparing for Life After High School

Now What do You Do?

If you’ve stayed with us this far, good for you! Hopefully, you now have a better sense of who you are and what you should do next. In these last three chapters, we will give you the tools to make the best of the time you have left before graduation. We will offer you some guidelines for how to optimize the time you spend preparing yourself for whatever comes next and, finally, we will present a framework in which you can situate yourself and your future.

Despite our efforts to the contrary, we know that some of you will follow the swarm to university and will join those who actually should be there. For that reason — and, frankly, because that’s where our experience is strongest — we are going to focus here on the ways in you can best prepare yourself for university. It is important to remember, though, that the suggestions we are making here also are relevant — in some way — to any of the paths open to you. Becoming good at math, for example, may not seem to be particularly important to you if you’re setting out to travel or committing yourself to a year of volunteerism. But the disciplined, rigorous thinking needed for advanced math can help you to organize your efforts so that you achieve your desired outcome.

Are You Ready for Success?

Let’s assume that you have passed the curiosity test and made the decision to go to university — a decision made alone, with your parents, or as a result of broader pressure to attend. The next question that arises logically is this: are you ready? We are sorry to have to tell you that, for large numbers of young people, the answer is no. Coming to university when you are not fully prepared is a really bad idea that can lead to a great deal of unhappiness. However, coming when you are keen and ready can be a real joy. Preparation helps, as does self-awareness.

Here are the top five conditions for success at university:

• High school grades are important, though they are not guarantees of success. The research shows that high-achieving high school students do well in university. Students who come to university with an average in the mid to high eighties will, in general, do well — though their grades will likely fall substantially (two-thirds of first-year students get lower grades than they did in their last year of high school).[1] While individual circumstances vary, students who come to university with a high school average of 75 percent or lower have a fairly small chance of succeeding in their studies, and many of those with less than 80 percent will also struggle. Time and effort spent in high school do pay off.

• English or French language writing ability is one of the most important predictors of career success. There are no short-cuts here. You must be able to read and write effectively. This is one of the greatest shortcomings of today’s university students. Too many students devote great effort to their mathematical and scientific skills and much less to writing. This is a huge mistake. Learn to write well. If your mother tongue is other than English or French, we are impressed with your ability to learn another language or two. But students with English as a Second Language often have serious problems at the university level, where tolerance for bad grammar, poor spelling, and awkward sentence construction is typically very low. Don’t rush to university if you barely passed the English or French language entrance standard.

• Mathematics matters. All high school students wanting to get into top university programs should have completed academic mathematics courses through to grade twelve, including calculus if available. There are two major reasons for doing so. First, numeracy matters and is of fundamental importance to many of the fastest-growing, best-paying careers around — from such obvious scientifically based fields as nanotechnology to areas such as finance, accounting, and economics. Second, mathematics is a very good indication of overall intellectual ability. Math is challenging, tricky, innovative, and creative. Other courses in high school have similar qualities, but you do not require high-end skills to get top grades in many of them. If you can do well in math (and not simply by taking the same course two or three times, as in the notorious high school victory lap), you have demonstrated the capacity for hard, intellectually demanding work.

• Reading (a lot) is key. This was part of the curiosity test and is, we think, vitally important. An amazing number of young adults do not read newspapers, magazines, non-fiction books, high-quality literature, or serious blogs or Internet-based commentary. Fewer than one-quarter of all university students in the United States read as much as a single book per year above specific course requirements. We find this sad and depressing. Canadian students are much the same. Literate young people are engaged and often well informed. The best university students read a lot. If you do not read on a regular basis, the chances that you will find university interesting are quite small. Note, by the way, that reading is strongly correlated with writing ability. Good readers are typically strong writers. Read. Read some more. Then keep reading. We have a longer section on this