We make every effort to stay in touch with our Collegewise students after they leave for college. But eventually, they move on from being college kids to living life as adults in the real world. And every now and then, we'll get an attack of “What ever happened to…?” That’s why yesterday I picked 20 former Collegewise students at random and took to Google to find out what they were up to today.
I found several lawyers, a physical therapist, and a student who played in the College World Series and had been drafted into Major League Baseball.
Several are working in financial services. One is a brand manager at a major advertising company, and another does project management for an environmentally focused architecture firm.
One student is getting a masters in public health.
I found a teacher, a journalist, and a teaching fellow who’s now applying to medical school.
Four former students are married today. Two of those four have kids of their own.
They’re students from all different kinds of colleges—famous and not famous. And unless Google and LinkedIn are somehow lying, none of those students is unemployed or living in their parents’ houses. They’re making their way in the world like the rest of us are.
But we’re also talking about real life. I found out that one former student had passed away suddenly at age 25. Another is now two years clean after battling drug addiction, a story she discussed on Katie Couric’s show.
All of these examples, from the heartwarming to the tragic, illustrate just how silly some college admissions anxieties really are.
A student’s college process is important and deserves to be taken seriously. But please remember that a C+ on a chemistry exam is not a permanent setback in your quest to become a happy and successful adult. An SAT score that fails to break 1500 or 1700 or 2200 does not mean you will never amount to anything. And a denial from your dream college is not a tragedy; it’s a temporary setback, one that you will forget entirely approximately five minutes after signing your papers to attend a college that had the good sense to admit you. The effort you put out to achieve those results is much more important than the results themselves.
I’m reaching out to some of these students to see if they might be willing to share their stories here. I’m hoping they’ll help me remind families going through this process that your life path is not defined solely by your GPA, test score or admissions decision from one college. Stay tuned.