#225 The Real Deadline for Choosing a College Major (What Families Often Miss) Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins
I get this question all the time, if you have a college bound team, do they actually need to decide on their college major as it relates to applications and timing? My simple answer is, by August 1 heading into the senior year. See that’s when applications open, that’s when they have to check a box as to what major Are you applying to. That’s when they need to be ready to show evidence of fit to major. And for many schools that require the why this major essay is evidence, that’s when they need to be ready to write. So the real question beneath the surface is, when does your child need to be ready? Not what date do they have to start execute? Or if they’re not ready, when will they start guessing? That’s the real question. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity, where we help families support their young people on a successful future launch. And for those of our listeners that have a college bound team to go, yep, this one’s for me, but maybe you have a senior who’s getting ready to graduate, maybe you have a college student stick with me, because I’ve got great advice for you too. So instead of thinking about this as a deadline as a timing issue. It’s not let’s think about it instead as a process problem that you’ve heard the stories. When it begins to show up late, students start feeling behind, and the fact of the matter is, they might be see, it’s not that they ran out of time. It’s because they never had a process, and they didn’t start the process on time. Now let’s talk about why this matters. See, by August 1, I don’t expect and neither should you young people to be 100% certain, but what they do need as they go into college applications is direction, evidence. You know, just like you hear these days, that hiring employability has become skills based, college admissions, in large part is evidence based. They have evidence based on their experiences that colleges can investigate students can point to to show that they’re ready. You know, about a year ago, a little about maybe 13 months ago, I had Rick Clark of Georgia Tech on and we talked about the often hidden impact that college major selection has on the admissions process, and this, it was our, actually our most popular episode of last year. And I can tell you why, because you hear the stories of what happens when kids aren’t ready. What ends up happening is they start guessing, you know, throwing spaghetti against the wall, maybe seeing what might stick. They choose default. I hear from admissions, I hear from those that work with teens in the high schools that the default, the code word for undecided, for kids who are uncomfortable saying undecided, and that’s a lot of them, tends to be business. Business can be code, but the challenge is, how do we know when business is an informed decision. Right? Kids who struggle to show the Fit piece, the evidence piece, and you might hear it in your kids voices, they don’t feel confident in their choices. It makes me think back to Omar, one of our former students, Lucas. He was heading into his senior year, and that lack of confidence began to show up inside his body, first and then outwardly towards his parents, and he began to get scared that the default for his family, which he came from, a family of engineers, and that’s fine, engineering didn’t really feel like it was necessarily going to fit, and he was making a decision under pressure instead of under clarity. The good news was summer before his senior year, he started actually doing the work, and so it wasn’t too late. We’re going to talk about this right timeline, but he was able to get clear before he hit submit, which most of his submissions were right around November 1. So I’ve already talked about August. First is that, you know, applications are open, and we’re going to get those find out what essays they want us to write and all the things. But submissions can be as early as early action, October 15, many of them early action and early decision. November 1. And for schools that offer programs that are enrolling on a rolling admission basis for competitive programs, aviation is one that comes to mind. You might need to be applying in August, right? So you have to decide, are you going to hope this becomes clear on time, or do you want to put a process in place so it does Okay? Remember, I said stick with me regardless of how old your kid is. So let’s talk about, what should you do? What is your individual timing depending on how old and what grade, what age your young person is? Okay, if you’re listening to this in real time. May and you’ve got a junior, there’s still time. That’s good news. You have a sophomore, your timing is going to allow ease and flow and less tension. Senior College student, stick with me. I’ve got some advice for you. Okay, if you have a sophomore start the process now, you will thank me later. You will have a less overwhelmed junior year. You’ll have clarity and plenty of time if you have a junior Summer Matters. This Summer Matters. This is May, and you’ve got time with the upcoming time off to get clarity now you have a senior, you’re like, Well, my kids graduating in the coming weeks or next month, where you already have a college student. Here’s what I want you to think about with this summer period. Treat this as starting afresh. They’ve probably made some choices that they’re already locked into, but I always say everything is figure outable, and even though some options go off the table with each age that we get each year ahead, there are still options available to start doing the work to build self awareness. Remember, we root this in self awareness and then career direction. And if you already have a college student, and that means you with seniors, use it to this, this awareness, use the time to begin to give you the information to guide course selection. Electives. Do you add a minor or instead, do you go after real world experiences like internships or credentials? We talked in a previous episode about the credential value index that you might want to listen to and to figure out what their next steps are, so that they’re set up for employability in the future. Wherever you are, here’s the deal, whatever age your child is the next step is the same. Start the process. If you’re a longtime listener, you know that I believe that it takes action to get traction. We’re not going to get traction by being bystanders. So how do we start this? Okay, we start with self awareness, not guessing at majors or careers, but looking at how the individual is wired, what their values are, what their aptitudes are, and any weaknesses they have. Can we please normalize that everybody has weaknesses be included? Okay, once you have that, then you can begin building direction. See, we go ahead and we suggest you filter the list of you can be anything previous podcast episode on that as well, bad piece of advice, and we filter it by the individuals wiring to get a manageable list of options. And then begin validating through real world experiences. So what we’re doing with the validation is we’re testing. We’re pressure testing what we think we might want to do. And remember, if we hit a ah, that’s not a fit, that’s actually still good news. It’s bringing it’s moving us forward. Now, there’s a few traps that I see happen that keep people stuck. Some of you might be thinking, my kids not ready yet. Your kid probably is ready. It’s just that they are overwhelmed, thinking too far ahead instead of what is the next, first step in the process this, they’ll figure it out in college. What I’ve seen time and time again because we’re enrolling as many college students and recent grads in their 20s as we are teens who are trying to figure out just college admissions and what comes after high school graduation. Question that they’re often not figuring it out in college, because, again, the career services aren’t going to come to them. And I’ve seen some really bad pieces of advice, poor resumes come out of career services. Not all colleges have equal Career Services, right? That’s something you should evaluate when you’re doing your you’re doing your search or falsely believing that they can just switch majors. We did an in depth study at the start of 2024 and found that with the state flagship universities, only 8% of them were truly, completely fluid on switching majors. Every other school, 92% had restrictions, capacity issues with switching at least some, if not all, of their majors. It’s really going to vary by school, so don’t give yourself false hope that they can just make a change in college, it doesn’t always work that way. See, when you’re waiting it for it to just fall in line, you’re waiting on time to help it figure itself out. That doesn’t remove the decision waiting just delays it, and as you delay it, you raise the stakes. More is at stake, especially once they’re already on campus. You’re already paying for it, and they’re investing time. Okay, now, if you’re hearing this and your child doesn’t have direction yet, I want to give you your next step is Join us. Join us Inside our community. Launch Career Clarity, where we wrap around both young people and their parents to give them a logical step by step framework to build self awareness, create direction and validate it so they’re not guessing it is true. Your child does not have to have it all figured out. If you’ve got a teenager going to college, you do need them to be ready to show direction by August 1 so the goal isn’t decide early, is just to be prepared when the decisions are required. So, yeah, there’s the deadline, and what you really need to do is start the process. Okay, if you’re finding this helpful, I want you to do me a favor. If you’re a longtime listener, could you go over and rate, review, share the episode, take a screenshot, send it to a friend, because you are not alone. And you know other families that are making these big decisions that are wondering the same questions, we get the same questions all the time. And I hope that you’re going to join me this summer, heading into summer, and launch Career Clarity. Okay, my friends, see you next week.