<p>do most of you guys no want kind of career you will have after college? Because i am definately not sure and have no clue so how should i go about picking a college or for that matter picking a career. For instance what if you end up picking a school that specializes in an area that you find out you have no interest in? What i am asking is how can i pick a good college if i don't know what i am going to college for?</p>
<p>relax :) Actually the people who should be worried are those who "know" what they want to do. Many people enter college intent on embarking on careers in medicine, law, engineering, to name a few, having never spent even 5 minutes seeing what the job is really like. They've built a castle in the sky, which is why so many people are dissatisfied after only a few years actually on the job.</p>
<p>I have to admit, it is a little unfair the way you have to play the cards, since you can't go to med school unless you enter college and take the pre-med requirements, won't be an engineer unless you enter college as an engineering major, etc. But who said life is always fair? Being uncertain is a good thing since it means you're open to exploring different areas and researching careers. You'll take advantage of the resources in college; interest & aptitude tests, guest speakers, talking with alums in various fields, internships, and so on.</p>
<p>You asked 2 questions -- how to pick a college and how to pick a career. The former is answered by lots of books; I'd start with any of the ones by Loren Pope (who has a bias towards LACs), and perhaps another one for balance. Don't just pick the names on everyone's lips, identify what YOU want in college and find places that deliver it. A solid education is the basis for any career. </p>
<p>The longer answer to picking a college when you don't know what you want to do (which I won't provide here in any depth) explains that college is NOT intended as vocational training outside of a few areas like accounting, nursing, engineering, etc. It is to train you to think, to be able to put together disparate facts that are sometimes at odds, to train you to express yourself and listen critically to others. This base will serve you no matter what you do.</p>
<p>The 2nd question is how to pick a career. I should note at the start that most people aren't going to have one career anymore. Things change too fast, and there's no guarantee your interests will remain constant the next 40+ years. However you're probably not looking that far down the road, you're looking 4 years ahead. The answer is what I already alluded to, take advantage of the resources at your college. Internships are <em>especially</em> important, BTW. You can also do some outside reading. One book I recommend is "Major in Success" which discusses how kids in college explore their interests and find careers that they will love. And an online article that I highly recommend is from FastCompany magazine called "Are You Deciding On Purpose" at <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/online/13/ldrplus.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.fastcompany.com/online/13/ldrplus.html</a></p>
<p>Lastly, your title said "how do you know for sure". I'll let you in on a secret. You NEVER know for sure. You never know if you've taken the right job, live in the right city, married the right spouse, or picked the right career. I think that in HS we do a disservice to our youth because you're implicitly taught that there is A (meaning singular) right answer. The teacher asks for the 4 causes of the Civil War, and you pop them out right from the text the way you've memorized them. They never tell you that had the district picked a different text you'd be writing about the 5 causes, not the 4. Math classes have answers that are right or wrong, so do the other science classes, and even your other classes have scantron-graded tests that teach you one answer is right and the rest are, well, wrong. When you get to college you'll see that life has a lot more grey areas than they've let on. An term paper about the Civil War may list 3 causes, or it may list 7, and each is equally valid if you can support it with evidence. The world is not as black-and-white as they've told you. So this can either be a horrifying revelation and one that you spend years struggling against (hence people joining cults that promise to have THE answers) or you accept it and go on; make the best decisions you can at the time, and if they don't work out you look at what you have learned, pick up the pieces, and go forward again.</p>