The overall 6-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree at 4-year degree-granting institutions in fall 2012 was 62 percent. That means that roughly 1/3 of people who start an undergraduate program don’t finish it.
2. Skilled Trades:
You don’t like school, or you like working with your hands. This was the reason that I initially went into the trades for work. I didn’t believe that school was “for me”. I wanted to work with my hands, and I knew I could succeed at it.
3. You Will Be Successful Regardless
Perhaps you are incredibly gifted. There is a famous study that indicates students who were accepted into elite schools, but went to less selective institutions, earned salaries just as high as Ivy League grads. In other words, successful people are going to be successful regardless of what advantages they are given.
4. Low ROIon college for your career path
High loans/low wages. Many students who graduate have debt that exceeds their annual starting income by 2x or more. This seems problematic. I graduated with less than 1/3 my annual income in student loan debt, and I didn’t pay it off only because I wanted to use that debt to build my first house.
5. You Have Connections:
I’ve run into several people over time who got a good job that they shouldn’t have been able to get because they (or even their parents) were friends with the hiring manager or business owner. Most of the people that I’ve met like this were still working on a college degree, but they were doing it part time because they were also gaining valuable experience. If you have connections, use them!
6. You Don’t Know What You Want To Do:
If you don’t know what you want to do, no reason to waste time and money on a degree. College is expensive and shouldn’t be undertaken on a whim. Do research. Assure that you will succeed in school.
7. You Lack Self Discipline
If you aren’t certain that you will be able to succeed at college level academics, I’d HIGHLY recommend that you search for a career path that would allow you to avoid it. First of all, if you flunk out of or cannot finish for personal reasons, you’ve wasted an incredible amount of time and potentially a lot of money as well. Just wait, your life situation may change in such a manner as to set you up for better success later. But perhaps right now isn’t the time.
Reasons to go to College:
You Lack Self Discipline
I want to stress that you won’t succeed in college without a significant amount of self discipline before you begin, but if you have an interest in something but lack the self discipline to successfully self study that topic to mastery, college may be the route to go. There are people out in the world who can master any topic they put their mind to. My brother happens to be one of them. He completed his bachelor’s degree using primarily CLEP testing. He did it on an accelerated schedule by taking a lot of credits, and while doing so he worked a full time job and had two small children, and carried a 4.0GPA. That is serious discipline. If that isn’t you, then consider college as an alternative. Speaking from my own experience, college vastly improved my self-discipline. During my high-school education I wasn’t forced to keep track of my calendar because of the home-school setting that I grew up in. It was only after several years of college that I developed the ability to work ahead on assignments. College was very good for me in that respect.
2. You are Greedy
You want a decent paying job (especially if you don’t want to work in the skilled trades). If you want a job that clears 6 figures, you’ve got to show your future employer that you’ve got self discipline. The easiest way to do that is by finishing school.
College is not a magic pill that you take once and it solves your career problems forever. College is a key that opens the door to potential career fields you otherwise wouldn’t have had access to. It doesn’t guarantee a job, and it certainly doesn’t a successful and interesting career. But decent grades coupled with some club involvement and/or summer internships virtually guarantee successful employment upon graduation or shortly thereafter.
3. You are interested in a career path that requires a degree.
The chances of you being able to break into a career path without the required schooling are low, very very low. I don’t know how to emphasize this, but especially when you start looking at some of the higher paid positions, you won’t likely be able to work your way into those positions without the required schooling.
4. You don’t like menial labor.
The vast majority of jobs that you can get without an undergraduate degree tend to include a fair amount of drudgery. These jobs usually get more appealing once you have some experience and your wage becomes too expensive to pay for low skill, simplistic, or mindless tasks, but it may take you as long as several years to get to that point. I have friends who have worked very unpleasant jobs for many years, simply to get to the point where their job was almost as pleasant as mine was from day one.
5. You want to broaden your worldview.
It is hard to quantify what it means to be in relationship with people from other cultural backgrounds. If you haven’t gotten the chance to do this during your adolescence, it can definitely be a formative experience that you will carry with you for the rest of your life.
This seems like an illogical question since everyone knows that electrical engineering requires an immense amount of math. If you are concerned that math might be the only thing blocking you from your desired career as an electrical engineer, listen closely to my story, you may be surprised what you can do.
It is difficult give any idea of my 1-12th grade academic/mathematical prowess, but I’ll attempt to do so here. As a bit of background: I started kindergarten right before my 6th birthday, making me an older than average student. In 1st grade my mom realized that I probably should have been in 2nd grade, and at least in math she forced me to do two lessons a day for the entire year. This reflects an early ability to work with numbers, but is by no means indicative of my ability overall in mathematics. I definitely remember this year as I was proud of the fact that I was getting ahead in math, but some days were a real drag for a 7 year old. From there I enjoyed a pretty standard grades 2-7, and when I reached 8th grade, my mom put me in Algebra 1.
Algebra 1
I hated Algebra 1. We used Bob Jones University curriculum, but I think it would have been the same for any other curriculum. I simply was not curious, and I didn’t want to learn. Only by the willpower of my mom was I dragged kicking and screaming through that year of school. It was absolute misery.
I remember asking my mom many many times “when will I ever use this?” The point stands, although I must thank her for her perseverance, particularly on Algebra 1, in which I received a final grade of A.
Course content: graphing, solving systems of equations, operations with polynomials and radicals, factoring polynomials, solving rational equations, and graphing quadratic functions.
To this day, I remain subpar at factoring, a result of my early and longstanding resistance to this part of mathematics. I never viewed it as a puzzle, and I think that would have helped keep my frustration levels at a lower level.
Algebra 2
When I started Algebra 2, I thought it was going to be terrible, but since I had come to the conclusion that it didn’t matter whether the concepts connected to real life, I recall this year being a bit easier than Algebra 1, although I think it was still pretty tough, and I have an email from this era that contains me complaining about how difficult Algebra 2 is.
Course content: quadratic equations, polynomials, complex numbers, and trigonometry.
Geometry
After Algebra 2 I completed geometry. Bob Jones University Press’s Geometry text is Euclidean in its approach.
Course content: Set theory, definitions, postulates, and theorems. introduction to trigonometry. From the 5th chapter on formal proofs are used and the number of proofs required is extensive.
I’ll be honest and say that I got lost after we got to “geometric proofs” because I didn’t put the time in that would have been required to master the content. My decision to give up was influenced heavily by the fact that I was aware my older siblings hadn’t completed the proofs section, so I could get away without doing most of it. This was the first time that my mom couldn’t really be of any assistance to me. I think she had a decent understanding of basic algebra, but geometric proofs was beyond her. I did learn to make constructions with straightedge and compass, which was amazingly fun. Without a doubt the first few weeks/months of this course were the most enjoyable part of any math class I’ve ever taken. I think back quite fondly on the first few chapters of that course.
Advanced Math:
Although I did technically “complete” this textbook, I only did it by spending about 1.5-2 hours a day on this subject, and by only doing small subset of the assigned homework. There were many days when I could only do a single homework problem, even with the 2 hours of study time. As it turns out, teaching yourself math from a marginal textbook, without using the internet is a very difficult proposition. This math still remains some of the most difficult I’ve ever completed. I think I would have given up far earlier, but being unable to complete the geometry textbook was maddening to me, and I also knew that if I completed the Advanced Math textbook, it would be a way of asserting that I was smarter than my siblings, all of whom had started that textbook and then failed to finish. I firmly believe that this is the only reason I attempted to finish this semester of math.
Course Content: Trigonometry, functions, graphing, conic sections and polar graphing, equations, matrix algebra, complex numbers and vectors, polynomials and rational functions, sequences series and math inductions, and calculus.
Compass Math Placement Test
A little more than two years (775 days) after my final high-school math lesson, I took a Technical College math placement exam. I remember studying for this a bit, but I know I was working full time when I took it, and I’d estimate my hours studied to less than 10 hours. I scored a 92/100 on High-school Algebra, and a 22/100 on College Algebra. This qualified me to enter the following Classes:
MATH 121 Geometry-Trigonometry
MATH 131 Algebra/Trigonometry I
MATH 133 College Algebra with Analytic Geometry (Standard College Algebra course)
MATH 134 Trigonometry (Standard College Trigonometry course)
MATH 135 Finite Math (Standard Finite Mathematics course)
MATH 136 College Algebra (This course, together with Math 137 Trigonometry with Analytic Geometry comprise a standard two-semester college algebra and trigonometry course)
Obviously I wasn’t a mathematical genius, but I did have a passing knowledge of high-school level algebra.
CLEP TEST
From that point on, I did no study in mathematics for 2 years, 5 months (885 days). At that point I took a CLEP examination for College Mathematics. I remember studying for this a fair amount, but I also took it in the middle of a semester when I was working 25 hours a week and going to school full time, so I couldn’t have put to many hours into study. I’d guess about 15-20 hours of study, likely even less. I needed a score of at least 50 at my college so that I didn’t have to do any math or quantitative reasoning classes. I got a 64, which to my mind meant that I studied too much. The CLEP test covered the following subjects:
Algebra and Functions (20%) Counting and Probability (10%) Data Analysis and Statistics (15%) Financial Mathematics (20%) Geometry (10%) Logic and Sets (15%) Numbers (10%)
At this point you can see that the self study that I had done had drastically improved my college level mathematics skills, but I think the improvement also more likely reflects that the CLEP exam is easier than the College Portion of the Compass exam that I had taken two years earlier.
ACCUPLACER TEST
2 years 8 months (978 days) after my CLEP test, I took another college placement exam. This time in a bid to qualify for placement in Calculus 1. I took this test twice. I would estimate 5 hours of study prior to the first attempt, and 20+ hours prior to the second attempt. The minimum required score for placement into Calc 1 was an 80. The first time I scored 57, and the second time I scored 74. The advisor that I talked to after I got the 57 told me that even with that score it was fairly likely I could convince a prof to let me into their Calculus class, so I didn’t study quite as hard as I probably should have for the second attempt and only got a 74 on the second try. I had to email a couple different professors in order to find one that would allow me into their Calc 1 class with this score, but I did eventually find one.
The University of Alaska Anchorage also requires a course in Trigonometry, but I didn’t ever take a highschool class in Trigonometry. I was allowed to sign up for Calculus 1 even though I was at best, unprepared in every area of math, Algebra, Trigonometry, and Precalculus. By rights I should not have passed that course. Our professor allowed open book and open notes on all exam problems, and provided an almost unlimited amount of time to complete the exam. I used this to my full advantage and I’m not certain I would have passed the course had it been the traditional testing style.
The reason that I wrote all this out was to explain that I was by no means ready for Calculus 1 when I started college. And yet, I managed to get through. My lack of mathematical prowess was a significant drag on my grades from that point forward. I would guess that roughly 90% of the grades that I received that weren’t A were because of my relative incompetence at math either directly, by flunking a test, or indirectly by having to spend inordinate amounts of time studying for classes that were math heavy.
Can you go back to school at 26 and succeed in engineering if you were marginal at math in highschool? The answer is yes, but you need to make sure that you are the type of person who finishes what they start. Engineering school was not fun. Was it worth it? Yes, without a doubt. But I can’t say I recommend it unless you really feel like you do not want to enjoy your college experience. Haha. Jokes aside, I wouldn’t change anything. If engineering did anything for me it increased my self discipline significantly, which isn’t something that you can really put a price on.
I also want to emphasize that it would have been significantly easier for me to get better grades had I been willing to go for 2-4 semesters of remedial math. Unfortunately, that did not work with my life plans (I wanted to be done with school before my kids had firm memories), and I also just couldn’t stand the thought of the extra time prior to getting my engineering degree.
I don’t think anyone should let their age dictate whether they go back to school. The human mind is amazingly capable of learning, don’t be afraid to try something that is hard. But know that it will be hard, brace yourself, and hit the ground running. If you are average, or slightly above average intelligence, you can definitely finish an engineering degree.
Printed Circuit Board Designed By An Electrical Engineer
First of all, you have to be motivated to succeed. I don’t know how to help someone with that, so I’m going to skip it. Instead I’ll talk about what I do know…how to succeed once you are motivated.
Time as an Investment
Engineering school takes time. Lots of time. I’d estimate the average 3.0GPA and above student spent well over 40 hours a week on school. Some spent as many as 80. Go to school early in the morning, and don’t leave at night until all your homework is done. I don’t know how to say this, but electrical engineering can be dry subject matter. There are no engaging story lines in this field, aside from the ones that you write yourself. Occasionally professors will bring up how a discovery was made in engineering or science, but these are few and far between in an engineering program that on average takes 5 years to complete. You must constantly remind yourself why you are doing this, what it is you want out of the program, and how it will benefit you in the long run.
Time Management
Use a Calendar. Carry the calendar with you everywhere (I printed mine on 8.5×11 sheets of paper and put it in my assignment binder) as soon as you are assigned a project, put it in the calendar. Live and die by that calendar. If an assignment changes dates, make sure that you change the date in the calendar. Continually come back to that calendar, use it to motivate yourself (or others if you can’t do your homework without them).
Be Good at Math
If you didn’t crush Calculus 1 in highschool, don’t expect to be able to pick this up without remedial math, and a lot of hard work. Start working on your math skills right now (preferably before the semester starts). My own math background was lackluster, and I managed to get through the program via sheer willpower. It can be done without this prowess, but the engineering program will be much easier for you if you excel at math.
Professors as a Resource
Go and talk to your professors. This is so inconvenient, but there are times when it is very worthwhile. I would sometimes force myself to complete assignments a day or two early only so that I could go and talk to the professor before the item was due when I had a problem. Some professors are vastly more helpful then others are. You’ll discover in the first few weeks of a class which professor is helpful and which is not. I also discovered that many professors like (or at least don’t mind) if you come to them to talk over a test that you recently completed. It helps them see that you care about their class, especially when your grade on the exam was better than average.
Friends as a Resource
Make school friends: The more friends you have, the less likely you are to miss something important that will affect your grade. Especially make friends with at least one person who knows how to take good notes. Sometimes being able to look over the notes that someone else took can save you a lot of points on a homework or exam.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. This was a hard one for me personally because I always felt like it was cheating to ask for help. Like somehow I should be able to do this all on my own. Obviously there are cases where you can’t do this (take home tests for example) but when not specifically prohibited from doing so, I would often find someone who was doing better in the class then me, and bug them. This got far easier as I got further into the program and had built relationships with people who started the program around the same time as me.
Chegg (or Slader)
Don’t use Chegg. This might be a controversial take, and I think that there are strong opinions on both sides, but I don’t recommend Chegg. I feel like having this subscription was a barrier to learning for many of my fellow classmates. That being said, I highly recommend having a friend that you do homework who has Chegg. That way if there is one question that you are both stuck on, they can look it up for you and walk through the problem. Depending on how much busywork your school requires, having this subscription may be more or less detrimental to your learning.
Top Resources for Completion of an Electrical Engineering Degree:
This guy knows how to teach circuits and electronics. A friend of mine found him on Youtube, and he helped me immensely. You’ll spend 1/3 the time learning that you would with other lecturers, because he doesn’t ever allow you to get confused.
This guy knows what it takes to learn Math (and several other subjects) and can break the process down it to small steps that anyone (even the math challenged) can master. It would probably be worthwhile to order the DVD’s from him, but I never did.
Super strange and memorable dude. Reminds me of a rarely seen eccentric uncle. But sometimes his examples are so spot on that you really can’t beat him.
This website has answers to the “canned” textbook questions that are a waste of time. I must emphasize that you should never look at the answer to a question before you have spent a fair amount of time understanding what the textbook has to say about that subject, and thoroughly completed the problem (attempting to do your best to solve it). There are no shortcuts to learning.
Post Graduation
These are best for real world practical application, not theory, but they always reminded me why I chose EE in the first place:
So you are 17-25 and unsure what you want to do with your life…
I’ve been where you are. In fact, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life until I hit 25.
I’ve lived in the Eastern, Central, Pacific, Mountain, and Alaska time zones since leaving home. See my post on choosing a geographical location. I’ve also worked in 4 wildly disparate career categories. So I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp of what the United States has to offer for a young person like yourself.
Picking a career can be hard. Even deciding if you want to go to college can be difficult, let alone what to study or which school to pick. Read on for a few of the pointers that helped me in my own personal search for the perfect career:
Interests:
If you are fascinated by a subject, and you want to/are willing to study it in your free time, you might want to pursue a career in that thing, whatever it is. Think about what you spend time doing, and what you would like to spend more time doing if you could.
Talents and Skills:
If you have a talent that you’ve practiced hard to get good at, and you are the best person you (personally) know at that thing, you should probably consider how you can fit your ability in that area with your calling/vocation in life. It might not fit with any of the careers that you are aware of, but ask people that you respect if they know of ways to apply those skills in a career path.
Ability:
This is your raw potential. What you are capable of at your very best. You haven’t developed a skill yet but you know that you could. This is your maximum potential under the right circumstances. For example, not everyone can succeed at math. You may be one of those people. If that is the case, engineering is not for you, no matter how interested you are in it. Engineering Technology on the other hand, perhaps. Even if you are great at math, perhaps you lack people skills. You didn’t get the opportunity to develop them in the environment that you grew up in, but you are confident that they will come. Start to try things out to see if you can master them, the more things you try out, the more you know what you have the ability to succeed at.
Self Discipline:
Certain careers take significantly more self discipline. If this isn’t something you’ve cultivated yet, consider whether you think you’ll be able to, or whether you’ll need to downgrade your aspirations to fit your lack of self discipline. (Keep in mind that you can increase your self discipline, this happens for many people as they age. For example, I personally wouldn’t have been able to finish an engineering degree had I started it directly out of high school, or if I had, my grades would have been far far worse.
Finances:
Not everyone is in the position to move forward with a college degree because of their finances. Very few people can live for free (though school can be almost free if you are smart, see my post on going to college for $75 a week). If you haven’t developed the necessary nest egg for school, consider living cheaply and working your tail end off until you have what you need. Be careful though, many people lose sight of their dreams and settle into a life of tedium because they don’t see progress toward their goals here.
Your Support Network:
Going to school is a difficult undertaking for more than the person who chooses it. It can be hard for their family and friends as well. I chose to go back to school later in life. I was able to choose that because my wife was supportive and did what it took to keep me in school. If you are a single dad, or you are providing for an elderly parent, excelling at school is going to be a lot more difficult, and you may need to take easier classes, or less classes per semester to maintain your sanity throughout school.
Other Things To Consider:
The biggest thing I can emphasize when considering your career path is to think ahead. Right now your interest is theater? Great, but be aware that you will probably not be among the stars of the stage. The chances of you landing a solid acting career are slim, and even slimmer if you aren’t willing to slog through several years of rejections before you get there. The data is in, and it shows that only about 2% of actors make enough money to live on. For every Morgan Freeman there is, there are literally thousands of extras who never get beyond the occasional un-credited acting part. Temper your dreams with reality. Get input from people you respect (real input, not just asking them to encourage you in the direction you’ve already chosen to go). If you like Computer Science and Pottery equally well, choose pottery as a hobby and the other as a career.
Be aware that your preferences change over time, so even if you don’t mind being a starving artist now, there may come a time when it gets irksome.
Start to try things out to see if you have interest in them, the more things you try out, the more you know what you find interesting.
Kids are expensive. If you plan to have children, consider choosing a higher paying career, even if your job satisfaction is slightly lower.
Not everyone who tries to become a full time artist will succeed. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve run into over time that have an “soft” degree of some kind who went back for a second degree, or leveraged their experience to move into another more lucrative but less desirable field. So when you are thinking of what career to pursue, be aware that those with extremely high job satisfaction often have a higher attrition rate because more people want those jobs than there are jobs available.
Please don’t be like me. A significant portion of my thought process for where I went to college directly after high school was something like this: “I want to go someplace that sounds fun”. My brothers had gone to a small college in southern Wisconsin that sounded like something from a dream. Cool people to hang out with, inter-mural sports 6 nights a week, and a cush job nearby that made paying for it all easy (notice that even 18 year old me thought about the financial side of things). They said the academics weren’t too challenging, which was a huge plus for me. I loved hanging out with people, and the way my brothers described it, there was a lot of that happening there. That was it. I asked my brothers whether I would be able to pay for it based on what I had in my bank account, and they said that I’d be fine if I could get the job that they had done: driving school bus. That was my entire economic analysis of where to go to school. No other opportunities were seriously considered. No idea what I would do with the degree when I graduated. And no awareness that technical schools existed where I could go to school for free… More on that in my other post here.
Other Options Besides College:
Cross cultural experiences:
Peace Corps: This is honestly a giant boost for your resume. I don’t exactly know why this is, and it isn’t something that people advertise, but everyone I’ve ever talked to in hiring has immense respect for someone who devoted a year of their life to a greater cause.
Christian Mission Work: If your church supports anyone, contact them and see if they need any help, or know of someone who does. This would be for those who would like to combine their volunteer service with something that they value, their relationship with Jesus.
Experiences in the USA:
Bible School: This is the route I personally did after High school. A solid choice if you feel uncertain about what you believe and you’d like to gain clarity about the Bible.
Wilderness Mentoring Camps: I have several friends that either run these or have attended them. They seem to be a mixed lot, with some being good, and others being a miserable experience. You should definitely talk to someone that has graduated from the program before you embark on this one yourself.
Start Your Own business: You can literally start your own pressure washing or lawn care business for a couple thousand dollars. See here for some other business ideas.
Work in a Factory: This is not something you want to do long term. Don’t get me wrong, there are certain perks, but it certainly isn’t the type of career that anyone should pursue unless life circumstances have closed all other doors. The remuneration is terrible.
Work in the trades: I worked in the trades for about 3 years full time, and an additional 2 years part time. I loved it. But the chances of sustaining a life altering injury are very high in this career. Accidents happen. The pay is fine, and most of these career paths allow you to open your own business (if you have the desire) after you have about 10 years of experience. But be prepared to “pay your dues” no one is pleasant to you in this type of position until you have proven yourself. And even then, many of the individuals you work with are, how do I say this delicately, “rough” / “real pieces of work”. Also, many of the jobs that you work (especially early in your career) may not cover vacation days.
Other: There are a few of you, probably less than 1 in a 1000, who have the chutzpah to do your own thing. Start your own business, succeed on your own, get excellent at that skill, and make money doing it. Go for it. Do it. Don’t be afraid of failure. Be afraid of not trying. The best time to fail in life is when you are young. That is because you have so many opportunities to recover after your failure. Also, when you are young you don’t have a lot of the baggage that you acquire later in life. You only have a finite amount of time, and if some of it is being eaten up in a relationship with a spouse, with kids, with maintaining a home, etc, you won’t have the time to focus on making that thing succeed. Also, unless you wait until later in life, when you’ve already amassed a decent amount of money, it can be very difficult to pursue something as risky as going out on your own or starting your own business when you have a family to support.
Specific Actionable Steps:
The following website will change your life if you let it:
It gives the wages of all the different jobs, and also has a write up about the amount of schooling that each career takes. I HIGHLY recommend it during your career search process. There is also a section on that website about what each career is like. You should read every article you can on the subject of your interest.
Please also consider reading my article on whether college is a good choice for you or not. For those of you who’ve already decided to go to college, how should you decide where to go to school? There isn’t any way around it, it takes work. Sit down and make a list of every school that you’d be willing to attend. Get on their website and look up their yearly tuition price, add $1500 to that number for fees and books. Multiply that price times the number of years you will be at the school, and that is the cost of attendance. Make an excel spreadsheet that has each of these numbers next to the school name, and list any other factors that would bring the cost of attendance up or down (expensive rent/living with parents/etc). A website like US News can make this process a lot quicker. I’d highly recommend using that site or a similar one, even if you have to spend a few bucks for a subscription.
Key Takeaways:
Okay. Here it is. If you walk away from this post with anything, make it this. Everyone has different interests and talents, but most people are not exceptional at anything. That isn’t a bad thing. I’m not exceptional either. That means that I probably am not going to make a good living as an artist, surfer, or some other job where the job satisfaction is VERY high, but median pay is low. This is why I went school for engineering. It was the shortest degree program I could find where the median wage over your career was north of 6 figures. Even a mediocre engineer makes good money.
You have the ability to DO HARD THINGS! I can’t stress this enough. YOU CAN DO HARD THINGS! School will be hard. Especially if you chose a career that has high expected earnings once you are done. People don’t know what they are capable of until they choose to try.
Don’t be afraid of taking a leap and failing. You found out something that you couldn’t do (at least at this point in your life). Find something else. And don’t be afraid to come back and try again, but give yourself some time to mature and gain some skills before you try again.
Listen, if you want to slip the colleges an extra $10,000 a year for your college experience, I’m fine with that. I’ve come to peace with the fact that not everyone can do what I did. But a quality education is still available to people at an affordable price if they know where to look. Anyone can graduate from college debt free if they want to. And that means you… yes, you! If you want the story version with all the juicy details, keep reading. If you just want the strategy I used, skip to the section with the headings.
Here is how I went about getting not one, but two undergraduate degrees for what many people spend on their first year (or even first semester!) of undergrad, and how you can do the same. Some of these tricks I used from the very beginning, and some I learned several years in.
There are 5 schools in my college experience, I’ll start with the most recent first:
I attended a state school in Alaska. The average cost of attendance was $4400 a semester, which is far below average, even for a state school. On average I paid less than $2200 a semester. The difference was made up by scholarships. My overall cost could have been far less, but I didn’t decide to attend school my first year until after the deadline for scholarships had passed. In other words, 56% of what I spent at the University of Alaska was during my first 12 months there. Total cost for 4 years of full time school? $17,600
I averaged $1000 dollars a semester for 3/4 of this undergraduate degree. How? Part of it is luck; I received in-state tuition at one of the cheapest state schools in the USA. The other part of it was hard work. I spent time on local scholarships, and they drastically reduced my overall school cost. In fact, I treated scholarship applications as a type of part time work. During the time when most scholarships had their deadline, I worked non-stop on them. Probably averaging 5 hours per scholarship application. At this point I already had a bachelor’s degree in education and this worked to my advantage as I filled out scholarships. I spent far less time than some people on scholarships, and I turned out high quality (judging by my success rate) applications.
I went to two different schools where the tuition was free. Yes, free. They were Christian schools and their goal, aside from education, was to prevent their students from graduating with debt. That didn’t stop one of them from charging ~$1000 a semester in fees, but who am I to complain? This is probably of limited usefulness to most you, since not everyone wants to go to a Moody Bible Institute. But it was great for me, and I walked away at the end of 4 years with an accredited undergraduate degree in education (Counseling to be precise).
After starting at this school, I learned about another school that would accept my credits toward an accredited bachelor’s degree. That sounded like a miracle to me, since I had no idea that accrediting agencies existed just a few months earlier, and hadn’t thought to check my school before I began. So began my process of transferring credits from one school to another. I’ve now attended 5 different schools. I promise that I hated school when I left highschool. There was nothing that sounded more boring. Learning grows on you though.
The strategies that I employed:
FASFA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid)
If you haven’t applied for this, you are throwing away money. Every single person who goes to school needs to apply for the Fasfa. Try to apply about 9 months before your classes start. At one school I went to I received a “Pell grant” for 110% of my tuition costs. This covered my tuition and all of my books, and I had some spending money left over. I can’t emphasize how important this is, especially if your parents are low income (student aid awards consider the income of your parents, as well as your own, until you turn 24, when it becomes dependent on your income alone).
This is the website where you’ll need to go to fill out the forms:
If you can, find some people that you respect to rent with. This could go really well, or it could be really hard. Even under the best circumstances, I’ve never lived with a group of people without having some high stress moments, but it has always been worth it. You will get to know people very well when you live with them, so make sure they are worth your time before you move in with them. I lived on campus, or off campus in a house with others up until I moved in with my wife.
Part time work
I highly recommend part time work to most people, unless they are shooting for a 4.0 GPA or have some other good reason to not work. I highly recommend looking for a part time job during your freshman and sophomore years in school that will allow you to work on homework while on the clock. Once you are a junior or senior, you hopefully be able to find a position that will build skills for your career. During each of my 4 year degrees, I graduated with more money in the bank than I started with. In order to do this, I worked full time in the summers doing what I knew how to do, construction. Use whatever skillset you have to make money. If you have no skills you can always be a waiter, busboy, coffee shop barista, valet, janitor or window washer.
Loans
Some people seem to have an allergic reaction to loans. They break out in hives at just the mention of that dreaded word. Maybe you are this type of person, you wake up clutching the sheets and shouting “24% APR COMPOUNDED DAILY, NOOOOOO!! Please read this paragraph with great care, because I’m going to tell you a secret that can change your life. Debt is only bad when it decreases your overall financial well-being. To illustrate this, take home ownership. Historically speaking, home ownership can be a great investment. If real estate prices rise at a greater pace on average then the current going interest on a mortgage, you may make money by being in debt! I bring this example up first, because the debt averse person is usually willing to make an exception for a house, simply because most people can’t afford a house without taking on debt. College “CAN” be far more advantageous then any mortgage, even with deep debt. Consider this: with 4 years of school, I literally doubled my earning potential. I have pay stubs to prove it. Even if I had to go into debt to do school (which I didn’t), it would have been a brilliant strategy. Say for the sake of argument that I needed to take out loans to finish that degree. The average student loan at graduation is $25,921. That means I could have paid my loan back in the first year after graduation, and still had an extra $10,000 to spare, not to mention a lifetime of increased earning above that. Do you understand why I think some loans are an acceptable risk? The risk is actually quite low for academically competent individuals who carefully research their desired career path and understand how the specific degree program and school that they’ve chosen will affect their work life & post graduation finances. If that isn’t you, then you need to do the research. If you are the type of person who isn’t capable of doing that sort of research, then maybe college isn’t for you.
Textbooks
I have an overactive conscience that won’t allow me to use any digital content that I don’t personally own, which eliminated the common strategy of finding textbooks online. What I did do was buy a previous version of the textbook, and often literally paid $200 less than my classmates for the book. Then I’d borrow someone’s book and copy down the questions that the professor required for that week, using my own book for everything else. I’d estimate this can save you from $150 to $800 per year on the cost of books. Libraries sometimes carry class textbooks, but you’ll have to email the professor early in order to find out what book the class uses, and check it out early from the library to be sure you get a copy (there are other cheap people out there too).
Transportation
If you don’t have to have a car, don’t have a car. Insurance, gas, and maintenance can really add up, especially if you can’t do maintenance yourself.
Standardized Testing:
Incidentally, I have never taken the SAT or the ACT. I started my college career at a non-accredited school which didn’t require any standardized test before entrance, and after that I was always a transfer student. But I have done my fair share of other standardized testing. Mostly college placement exams and CLEP tests. I did 17 CLEP credits. If I had been able to do more for my degree programs, I would have. They were so much easier then taking a class. The average time that I studied for my CLEP tests was about 8-10 hours. Less than many final projects, even for easy classes. I never failed a CLEP test, so I probably could have studied less. The one exception to this was Chemistry. I studied Chemistry for hours and hours. I never took Chemistry in highschool, so it was some kind of miracle that I was able to pass a CLEP test that covered two semesters of college level chemistry and lab. I highly recommend CLEP testing as an advantageous way to knock out some credits for (virtually) free. I think the tests were $80 each, including the proctoring fee. College credits are on average about $500, which means you could be saving thousands of dollars by taking CLEP tests. If you have interest in getting a college degree using CLEP tests or similar strategies check out www.degreeforum.net.
Scholarships:
I already mentioned it above, but spend time on scholarships. I don’t know how to emphasize this any more strongly. There are scholarships for people with good grades, but there are sometimes even ones specifically for people with bad grades. I recommend spending the most time on regional or local scholarships, then state scholarships, then national scholarships, as I never received funding from any national scholarships, but plenty of help from the others. Call the school you are attending, speak to their financial aid, and ask about scholarships that you can sign up for. They will steer you in the right direction. It is even worth setting up an appointment with someone who would know about scholarships if possible. Do this long in advance of the start of the school semester. My school had a cutoff in February for most scholarship applications for the following fall.
Know How Hard Your Classes Will Be
I highly recommend looking up every professor that you take using this website:
It gives you some idea of how difficult the professor will be. This allows you to plan much better for what classes to take in any given semester before the semester starts. This is only useful if other people have put a fair amount of reviews up. If you have a friend who is a year or two ahead of you in the program they will likely have a much better idea of what courses & professors will be difficult or easy.
Technical Schools: “Tech School”
These are public colleges that focus on non-four year degrees. They are cheaper, and usually require lighter homework requirements per credit hour. I knew people who couldn’t pass the physics or chemistry classes at the 4 year college, and they reported significantly easier classes at the tech school. They can also be a good strategy if you want to go to college, but haven’t decided on a major yet.
American Opportunity Tax Credit
I’ll just include a link so you can look it up yourself, but America subsidizes virtually every American college student with this tax credit.
Transferring credits is hard. It is so time consuming to try to figure out what credits will apply where. You will likely spend HOURS trying to understand how your credits transfer from one school to another.Take the time. It is worth it. I remember spending literally days figuring out what credits would transfer to my next program in school.
Honestly the credit transfer system for schools is broken. At some point you will need to see an academic advisor to see if your credits will transfer in. Very few schools will analyze your transfer credits unless you are an admitted student. If you are transferring credits, apply to the school and see what they say. If you don’t get the transfer credits you need, you are might lose out on your application fee, but that is better than having to retake entire classes because the school wouldn’t accept your transfer credit.
Once I started school, each progressive school accepted transfer credits from the school before it. It is a bit of a hassle to transfer as they usually require you to provide all kinds of information about the course work from your prior school, but think about how much time (and money) you’ll save by not having to complete any additional coursework! Transferring credits is a great strategy and you shouldn’t be scared to do it!
