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In my book, Winning the College Game, I suggest that one great strategy for making sure you get more than your money’s worth from your college education is to go to college with a clear goal in mind. After all, if you don’t know why you are going to college how will you know when you are getting what you want? I also suggest that the best goal to have for going to college is to prepare yourself to live the life you want to live after you graduate.

Of course not everyone considering college knows what they want to do after college. So you may be thinking this advice won’t help you unless you already know what you want to be when you grow up. Strategies for matching prospective colleges to what you want to do after you graduate doesn’t help if, like most people, you aren’t entirely sure what you want to do this afternoon let alone what you want to do for 30 or more years of full time employment starting several years from now after you get through college.

If you know that you really don’t know who you are and what you want to do after college don’t let that uncertainty stop you from having a great life. If you don’t know who you are and what you want to be even right now then I suggest you consider the possibility that college is a relatively expensive way to find yourself and perhaps you should look for cheaper alternatives.

However, if you have a guess as to who you are and what you want to do, but you aren’t certain then this is one of the sections of the book where you should pay close attention. I’m about to reveal the TRUTH about finding who you are and what you were meant to do with your life.

You will never know who you are and what you were meant to do with your life with 100% certainty. Sorry to be the messenger of such distressing news, but anyone who tells you they know who they are and what they are meant to do with 100% certainty is kidding you, kidding themselves or both.

The first reason you will never know who you are and what you were meant to do with your life is that who you are is constantly changing as you grow and have new experiences. Even if you know exactly who you are at this moment, an hour from now you will be somebody different because you will have had new experiences and new thoughts.

The second reason you will never know with 100% certainty who you are and what you were meant to do is that the person who decides what you are meant to do is you. Since you are constantly changing what you think you are meant to do will be constantly changing as well. So you still don’t really know with 100% certainty who you are and what you are meant to do with the rest of your life even if you think you know that with 100% certainty right now.

So why am I telling you that college is an expensive place to find yourself, and you should have some goal or purpose in mind before deciding whether to go to college and which college to attend if you do? Because life is a game that happens on the field and I’m telling you to play the game in order to have a satisfying and meaningful life.

But to play the game you have to be playing for something. You need a goal to shoot toward or you will simply be running randomly around the field. Sure you’ll be getting some exercise and you might even be having fun, but at the end of all your running around you aren’t likely to be far from where you started.

Picking a game to play and a goal to shoot for will challenge you to go beyond what you can already do. By taking on challenges you grow your capacity to take on bigger challenges in the future. Your options in life will be increased, not decreased, by choosing a goal and committing yourself to work as hard as you can to reach that goal.

If you are the kind of person who worries because you might not be shooting at the ultimate goal consider yourself lucky. Because you will continue to questions why you are playing this particular game you are less likely to fall into the trap of losing yourself in the game. When you become aware of a more inspiring game to play you can put down the one you are playing now without needing to justify why you are quitting the game you have been working so hard to win.

Some people seem to like drama, and they place an all or nothing bet with their life. They convince themselves that life will only be worth living if they make a million dollars, play professional sports, earn a PhD, get elected President, get married and have kids, pledge Alpha Omy Gosha or get into bed with that total hottie in their history class. If it doesn’t happen they have an identity crisis total meltdown convinced that life can’t go on. And then life goes on. So being slow learners, they move on to the next gotta-have-it-or-my-life-is-pointless game and so it goes.

Other people avoid emotional drama like the plague. They won’t admit to any desires, let alone commit to pursuing a particular goal. Of course they accomplish this feat at the expense of playing the game of life. No commitment equals no drama, but it also equals no growth. And then one day most of these folks wake up and discover that they are sick of their boring lives. So they have a midlife crisis, get the divorce, buy the sports car, quit the job and run off to Los Vegas. Or they suppress the crisis by numbing their feelings with drugs, alcohol or reality TV shows.

Neither of these is a strategy likely to result in a satisfying, meaningful life worth living. So I recommend an alternative. Recognize that you may not be 100% certain what you want to do with the rest of your life, but find the goal that seems most exciting to you now and commit to shooting at that goal.

Will you still be shooting at that goal five years from now? Maybe - but probably not.

If you discover three months from now that you would rather shoot at a new goal will you regret having worked hard to shoot at your current goal? Maybe – but probably not.

If you have been working hard to reach any goal chances are good that after three months you will have become a more powerful person, and you will have learned more about yourself and about the world. You will be better able to decide if the new goal is worth your commitment if you are already practiced at committing to a goal and working hard to pursue that goal.

If you are finding that this talk of goals and passions is still leaving you flat then your first task before choosing a college is to choose something to live for. It doesn’t have to be something you know you will be pursuing for the rest of your life. It doesn’t have to be something that satisfies your Mother, Father, pastor or high school guidance counselor. But it does have to be something that is meaningful to you.

If you don’t have some passion for playing the game of life, then it is very hard to get excited about signing up to spend tens of thousands of dollars and many thousands of hours earning a college degree. So maybe going to college before you have an exciting reason to go isn’t the best idea.

Does it strike you as unusual that I would suggest you don’t go to college unless you have a reason to go? Does that advice conflict with what everyone else has been telling you about the decision to go to college?

If you are in a situation where you don’t have a reason why you want to go to college, but everyone offering you advice is telling you to go you might be wondering whether my advice represents uncommon honesty or perhaps I simply don’t know what I’m talking about. So let me quickly run down why most people will tell you that if you can go to college you should go, and then show you why I’m saying you should only go to college if you are going with a purpose.

For many high school graduates deciding not to go to college immediately sets off passionate protests from one or both parents. Sometimes this involves authoritarian declarations that you are going to college no matter what. Sometimes it sets off dramatic performances involving weeping and fearful warnings that you are throwing away your future. Sometimes parents will simply look hurt and disappointed to get their message across.

Why are parents so concerned if their son or daughter says he or she isn’t interested in going to college right after high school? In most cases the protests are well intentioned. Parents assume that it is their job to protect their children from making bad decisions that might cause them harm. When you were two they had to keep you from running into traffic or eating kitty litter and they’ve been on high alert ever since. If they are convinced your decision to not attend college will cause you lasting harm they are going to do their level best to keep you from making that "bad" choice.

So why are they so convinced that a decision not to attend college is life damaging? Because on average college graduates do better financially than high school graduates who don’t attend college.

An analysis of data collected by the US Census Bureau indicates that a college graduate will earn an average of $900,000 more in their working lifetime than will someone who graduates from high school but doesn’t go on to college. (Day and Newberger 2002) Average annual earnings for high school graduates who didn’t go to college were $25,900 in 1999 and unemployment for this group tops 5 percent, while college graduates earned an average of $45,300 and unemployment was less than 3%.

Parents may also hear predictions that say the economic gap between those who are college educated and the rest of the population is growing and that in the future most of the jobs currently help by high school graduates will be shipped overseas. This is a simple, compelling and scary story and good parents everywhere want their children to understand this economic reality and to choose to go to college in economic self-defense.

The problem with this compelling story is that it is simple and life is complex. The charts that compare the economic position of college graduates and high school graduates who don’t attend college are comparing apples to oranges. If going to college was an event that was randomly assigned to high school graduates this would be a fair comparison.

But college attendance is more likely for students with high academic ability, students who were hard working in high school and students whose families have the economic resources to make sure their children can afford to go to college. If college didn’t even exist as an option the group of students who now end up graduating from college would earn more over their careers than the students who don’t now go to college at all because they have other advantages that would contribute to career success.

This is not to say that college doesn’t do anything to help further develop students so that they will go on to be more successful in life after they graduate. College done well can be a period of extremely rapid personal growth and can allow a student to develop particular skills that have value in the job market. On average college graduates will earn more over their careers than high school graduates, and some of that additional earning will be the result of skills developed in college and opportunities made available by having a college degree on their resumes.

However you are not going to automatically be issued the average earnings for someone with your level of education. You will actually need to develop skills and find employers or customers willing to pay you for applying those skills. College may be the best way for you to develop skills with economic value, or there may be a better path for you to pursue given your goals. And you won’t necessarily make $900,000 less over your lifetime if you follow another well chosen path to developing skills and using those skills in your career.

Of course your parents may also have some less noble reasons for wanting you to go to college. They may want to tell their friends that you are going to college. In other words, they may be caving in to that peer pressure they are always warning you about. Or they may want the house to themselves and will secretly be thrilled by your decision to attend Out of State University.

Just for the sake of making the best possible decision about college you would be well served to let your parents personal issues remain their business. Assume that the only reason they are pressuring you to go to college is that they truly want what is best for you, and they are offering you the best advice they can give with what they know about college. If after you educate yourself about your college options you reach a different conclusion than they have reached, approach them with genuine gratitude for their concern about your future, share with them what you’ve learned and why you are thinking of making the decision you’ve chosen.

Then give them plenty of time to express all their hopes and fears and let them know that you’ve heard them. Parents who know you’ve listened to and honestly considered what they have to say are much more likely to listen to and consider what you have to say. Let them go first, and you improve your chances of having them accept it if you get the last word about college.

[Note to parents: Your children do have the last word about college. You can pressure them into attending college, but you can’t force them to benefit from the experience. If your child really doesn’t want to go to college and only does so because of parental pressure there is a good chance he or she will flunk out, drop out or spend four years accumulating lots of great if somewhat hazy memories but very few marketable skills.]

The advice you will receive from high school guidance counselors will vary from school to school, but in general they will advise any student whose grades and test scores are good enough to get into a good college that they should go to college. In part this is because of the economic arguments I just listed in the previous section. In part it is because they really don’t know you as an individual that well and so they are giving generic advice that works well for the majority of students but may not apply for you.

And in part they are giving you that advice because outsiders looking at how well a high school performs will see the percentage of students going on to college as one measure of success. So if you carefully consider the issue and conclude that college is not for you, at least not right now, you are messing up their statistics. While you may have a great deal of sympathy for the plight of the high school staff and administrators, my advice is that you should aspire to something greater with your life than being someone else’s statistic.

So listen to your high school guidance counselor for all of the information and experience she can share. Be grateful for the effort and commitment that goes into doing this important and often difficult job. And then make sure you are making your own decisions.

College admissions offices are looking for likely prospects, and interact with you through the filter of wondering if you will apply, will they want to admit you, and if they admit you will you come? Their performance is measured by the number of applications received and the quality and size of the entering class they are able to recruit.

Most college recruiters do care about finding the prospective students who will be best served by their college. Still it is difficult for them to be completely objective when they are being measured by the applications they bring in and the students who actually enroll.

Asking a college recruiter whether or not you should go to college right away is a bit like asking a priest if you should attend church regularly. You can be pretty sure you know what the answer will be. Asking if you should apply to their college may be a little more useful, but if they didn’t believe in their product they shouldn’t be out selling it.

They may ask some qualifying questions, and they may let you know if it would be a waste of your time to bother applying, but if you meet the minimum qualifications as a prospect they would like you to apply. In fact, if they are really under pressure to make their college appear more selective they may want you to apply even if they don’t think you are likely to be admitted because they need to reject some applications to prove they are a highly selective college.

So admissions staff and college recruiters are a great source of information about the strengths of their particular college, and you should appreciate them for this service. Just don’t ask them to help you think through whether or not to go to college. That simply isn’t their job and they are in no position to be impartial on the subject.

If you talk to your friends about going to college I bet I can tell you what advice they will give. You friends tell you that you should do what they are planning to do. Friends who are going to college think others should go to college. Friends who have decided not to go to college think others would be smart to make the same choice.

It is simply human nature to want to make good decisions, and one way we can convince ourselves that we have made a good decision is to surround ourselves with others who are making the same decision. This applies to going to college or not going to college just as much as it applies to smoking or not smoking, drinking or not drinking or listening to country music/rap/techno/grunge/smooth jazz.

Discussing the decision to go to college or not with your friends can really help you identify and sort through your feelings. Your friends can also give you information about the college search or application process that you haven’t discovered for yourself. But don’t expect your friends to be able to be objective if you are wrestling with the decision about whether or not to go to college and they have already decided. Just keep in mind that they have to live their lives while you have to live your life so if what feels right to them doesn’t feel right to you listen to your own voice first.

So why am I saying that you shouldn’t go to college unless you have a reason to do so? Two reasons:

First, only 56% of students who start college in the U.S. have earned a degree six years after they start. (Knapp et al. 2005) Going to college and dropping out before graduating isn’t a good strategy. At minimum you will have spent time and money (yours or someone else’s) without gaining the intended benefits. At worst you may find yourself with educational loans to pay back and no improvement in your income. If you don’t have a reason to work hard while in college you are at more risk of ending up in this situation.

Second, college is expensive whether or not you graduate. If you are paying your own way and piling up debt to do it you want to make sure you are getting your moneys worth. If someone else is footing the bill you still want to be sure you are ready to take full advantage of this opportunity.

I am not telling you that you shouldn’t go to college. I’m telling you it is great to go to college as long as you have a purpose for going and you are committed to that purpose. Going to college on purpose makes it much more likely you will get your money’s worth. Going to college on purpose also makes it much more likely that you will love the person you become in the process and will love the life you lead after you graduate. And that is what winning the college game is really about.

Day, Jennifer Cheeseman and Eric Newburger, The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Life-Work Earnings, P23-210, US Census Bureau 2002

Knapp, L.G., J.E. Kelly-Reid, R.W. Whitmore, S. Huh, B. Levine, M. Berzofsky and S.G. Broyles, Enrollment in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2003; Graduation Rates 1997 & 2000 Cohorts; and Financial Statistics, Fiscal year 2003 (NCES 2005-177) US Department of Education, Washington DC: National Center for Educational Statistics 2005