 Hello, my people. Welcome to the SCORE channel. Today we answer a simple question. When should you start planning for college? I've got advice for every age group so you'll know exactly what you need to be doing every step of the way. You're a baby! You're still struggling to form words and move around on your own. As a baby, you're almost completely useless right now. All you do is eat your parents' money and poop it into expensive diapers that also cost money. When you're not consuming resources, you're depriving your family of much needed sleep as you scream and cry for no good reason at all. But hey, you've got potential. Maybe you'll grow up to be an architect or an engineer someday. Never mind. I'm so glad I'm not gonna have kids. Welcome to the wonderful world of education. It's time to leave the comfort and safety of your home and instead be placed in the care of an underpaid and overworked woman who has to deal with stupid bulls*** like you peeing on the floor in the middle of class. Sorry, Mrs. Smith. But don't worry, the animal-like nature of children will be your first introduction to this thing we call society. You'll either adapt quickly, make tons of friends, and be a total child chad like this kid. Or more likely, you'll end up completely ostracized and come home every day to cry for hours, only to repeat the cycle day after day after day for the next six years. Fortunately though, you do not need to be thinking about going to college right now. You're a kid! Nothing you do right now counts at all. You could commit a horrible crime and you won't even go to jail. I'm stabbed through with the knife. Court finds her not guilty by reason of mental illness or defect. So for now, try and have some fun. Live a little. If you're a girl, then by now, you've probably already started to think about going to college. You've also planned your wedding down to the dress you'll wear in the exact hair color of your ideal partner. None of those plans will actually happen the way you hoped they would, but it's good that you're thinking about your future. You don't need to be thinking about college just yet though. But we're getting close. Like really close. Okay dudes, listen up. You're in middle school, which means you're pretty dumb. The only things on your mind are video games, sports, well... You know what, let's just not go there. If you're in middle school and you're already planning your future, you probably get picked on a lot by other kids at school. Sucks, doesn't it? But look, if there's ever a time to be a dumb young dude, it's middle school. Go ahead and be dumb. You don't have much longer. Ah, high school. From this point forward, everything you do matters. Practice time is over. No more do-overs for you. If you fail math your first semester, that'll show up in your GPA when you graduate. Your universities are going to ask to see your last four years of education. So now is the time to actually start caring. Unfortunately, this is around the time where you'll become incredibly self-conscious and become obsessed with what other people think about you. In your efforts to avoid looking weird or acting strange, you'll make awkward attempts to fit in instead of just being who you really are. But you don't know who you really are yet because you're just starting to be a real person. Though lacking any clear identity, you'll become a sort of human tofu that absorbs the flavor of whatever's around it but has no taste of its own. You'll let popular girls treat you like s*** and pretend to like what other guys like just so you don't have to go it alone. Because you and everyone around you are miserable, all pretending everything's fine, you'll develop a keen sense of bullshit. You'll look around and think that everything is phony, just like holding coffee. And you'll be right because just about everyone, from your classmate to your teacher to your parents, is lying to your face about what really matters. You don't need perfect grades to be a successful person. You don't need to be number one in everything. You don't need to study past midnight for every test. Put your phone away and get some sleep. What you should be doing here is getting into new activities. High schools have tons of things to do and by joining clubs and meeting like-minded people, you'll be able to make real friends that you can actually be yourself around. And by making decisions about what to do with your time, you start to learn more about who you are and what you want to become. And if you do develop an eating disorder, don't worry, it'll make a great topic for one of your college essays later on. Now that you've settled into high school, you'll probably head down one of two paths. Either you'll opt for complete and total boredom where you stare off into space waiting for the next bell to ring, sitting in absolute silence for the majority of your waking hours, or you'll have found a few things you actually like to do and you'll look forward to doing those things with a few real friends, people who you can actually open up to and share your ideas and feelings with. And as you share those ideas and say those crazy thoughts out loud, you'll start to discover who you really are and what you actually believe. Instead of being a voiceless piece of meat drifting down the hallway in a zombie-like state you'll actually have a voice. You'll start to see that you do have agency. You can make decisions. Even the world around you will start to offer you some choices. You might even elect to take a typing course like I did so that you can get an easy A only to find that it's actually the most useful skill you've learned in your entire life and people who type while looking at their keyboards are pathetic beta c**ks. Seriously though, most valuable class I ever took. It's time to start thinking about college! Hopefully you've put at least some effort into your classes so that your GPA doesn't look like a dead animal on the side of the road. You're halfway in now, so if you dug yourself a deep hole you'd better start climbing out of it. Yes, that's right. 11th grade is a great time to start thinking about college. In less than two years you'll be done with school and if you don't start making plans soon you'll pick up your diploma only to realize you have no idea what's supposed to happen next. By now you should have some idea of what kind of work you want to do in the future. If you're hot your goal is probably to be famous and you don't need college for that so go on and get the hell out of here. For all those 8s and below that are still here you might have some career ideas in mind but the social construct that is gender has already pushed you in one direction and you haven't even realized it yet. Since you've spent nearly every waking minute pursuing romantic encounters staying up late to sex someone instead of studying even a little bit your career choices are obvious. You need a job that makes a lot of money so that you can keep impressing girls and drive a Ferrari. But because most of you haven't aced a math test in your entire life you'll line up to become lawyers or get business degrees with dreams of becoming entrepreneurs and because of deeply rooted sexism in those two worlds you'll probably succeed. A lot of you should probably start learning carpentry or how to fix a broken toilet but everyone insists that you absolutely must go to college your parents don't want to be the loser parents whose kid doesn't go to college so they pressure you to get into a top university even though you're not really top university material and that's okay you'll end up somewhere decent and be just fine. If you were one of the smart dudes that was bullied by the previous group you will probably want to spend the rest of your life working with computers since that's the only reality you've ever known. That was my plan but Best Buy wouldn't hire me but I still get to sit in front of a computer all day so who's laughing now Geek Squad? The smartest of you will be engineers and eventually unlock your inner Chad later in life. There's no need to do separate categories here because all women are smart but some of them only use their smarts for evil. Because you women have superior social skills and a supernatural almost inexplicable superpower known as feelings you have a natural inclination towards careers that involve working closely with other people. You want to be social workers, teachers, psychologists. Unfortunately society has decided that these essential positions deserve the least amount of financial compensation and you don't want to depend on a man so you decide to become a nurse or even a doctor. If you think most people suck though and you don't want to save their lives might I suggest becoming a vet or a marine biologist so you can do the same thing with animals? Just be careful that you don't become a cat lady. But what if you don't know what you want to study or what kind of work you want to do? You don't actually have to decide now. You can decide not to decide and go study at a liberal arts college or a big university that lets you declare a major later. Watch videos about people in different professions read articles about different topics. If science makes you want to fall asleep maybe don't plan on studying biology. If you're fascinated by NFTs go download Illustrator and start practicing graphic design. Just do something. Anything. Don't just sit there. Your final year of mandatory government imposed indoctrination is here. Congratulations you've made it to the end. If you haven't started thinking about college yet you really need to soon because you're going to be applying to universities very soon. As in like maybe in a few months. You really should have started thinking about this sooner you know. Now would be a really good time to sit down with mom and dad and have the talk. Your parents have probably never told you how much money they have because parents are weird like that. But you need to get a straight answer from them because college isn't cheap and you sure as hell are not going to pay for it because you're in 12th grade and have nothing but a gaming PC to your name. If you don't have a gaming PC to your name then I'm sorry. I'm sure your parents love you really. I'm sure. So ask mom and dad how much they can afford to invest in your education. If they laugh there's always the reliable career of construction work. Make a list of universities that you're going to apply to. Write down the cost. The earliest application deadline. Fill out the comment app with more personal information than you'd give to your future spouse. Study relentlessly for a standardized test like the SAT or ACT so you can get a scholarship. Complete financial aid forms like the CSS and FAFSA so you can get free money for people if your parents want financial help. Prepare for your future for recommendation letters. Upload documents. Take the SAT again. Check your email every day. Hey, what are you still doing here? You're supposed to be in college. Oh right, you didn't apply in time. Now you can't go to your dream school and all that's left are evangelical Christian universities, right? You're f***ed up. But don't worry. You get a second chance.