 Life on this planet can be hard and when you're faced with the pressure of figuring out what to do with the rest of your life It's enough to make you feel like you're going to explode But don't eat yourself out the window just yet Today we're gonna help you figure out how to choose a university Hello, my people today on the score channel I'm gonna be showing you guys a little bit about how we approach the problem of Choosing a university and hopefully take some of the pressure off of you guys so that you don't feel like this is the most important Decision in your life because spoiler alert. It's not There are four key questions that you should consider where how What and when now the order you consider those questions also matters Most people start with the what but I want you to start with where I'm talking about where as in Where on this planet do you want to be for the next several years? Do you want to stay close to home close to your family or do you want to get as far away from them as humanly possible? Do you want to stay in-state or go out of state? Do you want to stay in your country or go to a completely different part of the world? Where you go dictates some of the things you can do So you should think about the kinds of activities that you like to enjoy if you would rather be doing cold weather sports Then get up into those mountains and go skiing if you'd rather be on the beach surfing it up then check out universities in LA Do you want to experience the hustle and bustle of city life or would you rather have a calm peaceful? Suburban environment all of those questions belong to the where category and we haven't even started thinking about universities yet And that's why it's so important the new year is a great time for setting goals and making plans One of the best ways to actually reach your goals is to use a technique called visualization You need to visualize yourself in that situation where you want to be imagine the sights and sounds that you'll hear Let's try it with New York Come with me on a journey The more you do this the easier it'll be for you to capture that image again and stay focused on achieving your goal This applies to everything not just universities using this technique all the time Once you've settled on a where the rest becomes a lot easier Let's move on to the how now how really just refers to how are you going to get into these universities? And it can be broken down into two aspects. There's the academic side, and there's the financial side How are you going to pay for it? How are you going to qualify for the university? The thing is this is easy now because if you've made it your goal to study in New York City and not necessarily New York University you have a whole range of options to choose from you can find a university That's perfect for your abilities and your budget You can figure out exactly what you need at different levels, and you'll get there no matter what with where and how out of the way It's time to ask when now Most of us think to do this as soon as possible, right? We graduate high school We go straight to university, but maybe that's not the best choice for you Have you considered waiting a year getting some work experience? Saving up some money so that you don't have to get into as much debt or take a year off and travel Learn a little bit more about yourself and spend some time on your own Or maybe you want to take a year off just to work on your English skills and beef up your SAT scores In which case you should check out prepwithscore.com. I left what for last intentionally I realized that's a controversial decision and a lot of people might think that that's where you need to start You need to think about what you want to study and what you're going to do with the rest of your life Listen up my people. This is not how it works. I Studied education, but I'm here making a YouTube video for you So I'm living proof and I got plenty of other friends who studied one thing and ended up doing something completely different I have one friend who studied film production, and he's an English teacher of another who studied medicine And he's a programmer What you study does not determine what you're going to do for the rest of your life So stop thinking about it that way What you study is simply a combination of knowledge and skills that will allow you to do other things with your life Now obviously if you have a clear idea of what you want to study go for it. Go do that But if you don't It's not that big of a deal and here's why First of all if you study you're probably going to have to do some general electives anyway A good example right here at the College of Engineering and the University of Michigan requires students to complete 16 credits of what they call intellectual breadth coursework General electives things that are not related to engineering. They give you a full list So even if you want to be a nuclear engineer You're still gonna have to take 12 credits of other classes and most people do that in their first year of study so You can go into the university and maybe in that first year You're not quite sure what you want to do so you get some of those general electives out of the way and maybe along the way You discover that your passion is actually something else besides that Universities aren't exactly teaching you all the skills that you need to get into the working world anyway Take a look at this a UNESCO paper talked about a study by the Pew Research Center Which is one of the best in the United States and it mentioned that even though 74% of the people surveyed found that university helped them grow intellectually only 55% saw their education as useful in preparing them for their job or career take a look at what Employers are looking for in the same paper. It talks about how the world needs leaders and employees with foresight Who can identify new opportunities design creative solutions and bring them to market? You see that word created is everything Creativity is when we'd make new ideas by combining existing concepts that we're familiar with What you study is going to give you some more ideas that you can combine together to make new creative things So now that we've covered the score approach, how do you put it into practice? What do you do? Well, the first thing you want to do is use the where so figure out where you would like to study Make a list of all the locations that you're interested in and then go find all the universities in those locations Don't just focus on your top schools or your favorites or the ones you've heard about Dig deep and look for every school that you can possibly find that sits in the area where you would like to be In the last episode I talked about why college rankings were broken But there is a good website that you can use to get an idea of how much you can expect to spend in University and how much that education is actually valuable to you It's called pay scale and here they show the total four-year cost of universities Alongside the 20-year return on investment in other words They take the earnings of graduates over 20 years and look at how that relates to the cost of the university Next start making a list of these schools according to your ability to get into them think about the how I Recommend making four different tiers the top one being out of reach These are ones that you just don't think you're ever gonna qualify for or simply could never afford The next tier is gonna be the dream schools These are the ones that you could possibly get into but you might need a scholarship for or maybe they're very competitive Even if you have the money next go with your best fit schools These are the ones that you could definitely pay for and that you definitely think you could get into and you Definitely think they would be right for you Lastly make a list of safety schools These are the ones that you know for sure you're gonna get into and they'll probably even help pay for it because you're so awesome But you'd rather get into some of those best fit schools or maybe even a dream school before you go here With those four out of the way you can start making your list of requirements such as your supplemental essays and Really get to work on your applications So guys the whole point of the video today was to talk about a different approach to how you can figure out which Universities you should study in and I wanted to share this with you because this is what we do here at score This is our whole game We want to help people find universities that are right for them and not just go to the best Universities or the top ten for this particular career We want to help people find places where they fit and we'll actually learn If you'd like to learn more about what we do then go to prepwithscore.com and see our services and see how We can help you figure out the university of your dreams This is just a little sample of the kind of work we do we work individually with each person to figure out exactly where they Want to be and what they want to do and how they're gonna get there and by working together We've accomplished some really great results already this year So if you're interested check out the link in the description if you found this useful Please like and subscribe we got more content coming out for you and let us know in the comments What you want us to make for you already some people are asking about different countries for us to cover So we're gonna be putting up some new videos on that soon as well as covering some other common questions that people have about the Application process. I'll see you next time