How To Graduate From College In 4 Years

What a rediculous headline I just wrote! Unless your student is in a 5-year co-op program or studying in some specialty that requires 5 years, there's roughly a 60% chance your child will take 5 years to graduate.

Five years. Read: MORE MONEY.

Have you saved enough money to cover that 5th year? Like maybe $10,000 or $35,000 if it's a private school? This is pure economic insanity. It's bad enough that the major colleges and universities are gouging parents with no controls on what they charge. That's for another post....

Here's what I recommend you do: as a requirement before I even talk to my students about college, I have them take a personality assessment called the About U. It's powered by the same method that major corporations have been using for years. It determines whether an applicant for a job has the temperament and the personality to meet the demands and requirements of the position. If so, the employee is efficient, happy, and productive - what every employer wants from an employee.

This assessment has been reformatted for the youth market so that similar positive results can be achieved. Let me translate...

Once your child has his/her assessment completed after 45 minutes in front of a computer, a report will indicate what the student's real needs are, what genuinely motivates them, and what kind of environment is best suited for them to be most productive.

As recently as yesterday, a parent was going over her daughter's report and noticed that her teen needed a lot of time alone, that she needed a quiet environment in which to function. It took the mother no time to figure out that maybe a small college was going to be a "right-fit" for her student. In terms of college searching, can you guess how much time and money will be saved because of the discovery of this one seemingly small but significant fact? The report is loaded with significant facts.

This is no free persoanlity test that high schools like to suggest. Get out your credit card and have your student take the test as early as the sophomore year of high school. The results will be life-long because our basic personality DNA is determined by the age of two. The website: www.about-u.com.

Once the assessment is understood, you ought to take it yourself. Most of my clients end up taking the assessment so that spouses understand each other's needs, what motivates them - really cool stuff!

College doesn't have to last 5 years if you have a solid idea of what direction your life should take. And a student can do it before s/he graduates from high school. Don't hold back for this assessment because a young person's future is a stake, and so is your retirement.