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The following is excerpted from 25 Ways to Make College Pay Off: Advice for Anxious Parents from a Professor Who’s See It All (an excellent book IMO — I’ll be featuring more of it in the weeks to come) by Professor Bill Coplin (AMACOM 2007). Today we’ll cover 16 of the 25 tips in the book — the ones dealing with the students’ part of college planning. (FYI, the intro below is for all 25 tips and is included even though the tips are broken up.)

Although there are far more than twenty-five specific tips and strategies presented in this book, this list represents the twenty-five key ideas I would like to convey. If you take nothing else from my book, incorporate these twenty-five principles as you help your child find a satisfying career through the college experience.

This list is divided into two groups. The first group describes things you can do (or avoid doing) to be sure your child is on the right track. You can think of it as advice to you as an investor in your child’s future. The second group addresses actions your child must take, but you have a lot of influence on those actions.

For Students

1. Pursue the three goals of developing skills, building character, and exploring careers.

2. Determine how your college years will help you achieve these goals.

3. Consider taking a year off before college to work or investigate nontraditional programs and colleges.

4. View the application process as a test of your commitment to skills, character, and career exploration rather than as a test of your future success.

5. Gain between six and fifteen college credits while in high school.

6. Assume that no more than 50 percent of your course work will help you prepare for a career; the other 50 percent comes from internships, part-time jobs, student activities, and social experiences outside of the classroom.

7. Hit the ground running and aim for a valuable work or internship experience the summer after your freshman year.

8. Take courses that emphasize skills, use hands-on activities, and require team projects and writing.

9. Don’t obsess over grades as long as you are near or above a 3.0.

10. Spend at least one semester and as many as three semesters in off-campus, credit-bearing programs.

11. Avoid summer school unless it can be used to eliminate pesky requirements.

12. Don’t make graduate school your default option instead of getting a real job; in most cases, graduate school should be preceded by two years of full-time work experience.

13. Go to your college’s career-services office early and often.

14. Remember that temp agencies can provide summer jobs and a career launch for the confused and undecided.

15. Put as much time into searching for your first job as you should have put into applying to college.

16. See your first job after college as a step that can lead in many directions you never anticipated.

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This is the hit-list I’ll be working with my kids on for sure over the next several years!