Life After High School - Attainable Dreams

In this session, we are going to see how a dream career can become a simple reality. There are certain simple steps a student must take to reach his dream career. The process is quite simple, yet a little unusual to some of us. This process is called Planning by Reverse Engineering.

Here are the steps.

1. The student Picks a Career (Profession) - People have different career goals; likes and dislikes about what they want to do for a living. For some students picking a profession is very simple, and yet for others, it may take some time.

2. After picking a profession, a student must see if that particular profession requires any further education beyond high school, such as vocational training, career college, university, or graduate school. If it does, then the student must work backwards from the profession all the way back to high school.
For example: If the student wants to become a LAWYER, then she would have to go to law school. There are many different law schools. Some are ABA accredited and others are not. Graduates from non-ABA accredited law schools have certain practice limitations and restrictions. Therefore, the prospective lawyer will have to make a choice. Once she has an idea of which law school she wants to attend, then she will have to check their admission requirements. Here are a few general requirements accepted by most law schools: a) LSAT (Law School Admission Test) scores, b)Undergraduate (College) Degree, c)Pre-requisite Courses, and d) Undergraduate Major.

3. Based on these graduate school (e.g. law school) requirements, the student will have to pick a major, a direction of study concentrated on a certain field or subject. All college students must pick a major in which they will eventually receive their undergraduate degree. There are many majors offered by colleges. All colleges have different national rankings in different majors or fields. A certain college may rank #2 in Biology, but #100 in architecture. The student will have to see how their chosen college ranks in a particular major. More often than not, students who want to got to law schools will choose to major in English, Political Science, International Relations, and Government. The mastery of the English language is essential for lawyers.

4. Once the student picks the best suitable college for her major, she must then look into that college's admission requirements, just like those for law schools. And similar to laws schools, college admission requirements may vary from one school to another. The basic requirements are as follows: a) High School GPA, b) SAT or ACT Scores (Some colleges accept SAT's and others accept ACT's. The student must clarify their particular testing requirements with each school) c) Extracurricular Activities (volunteer work, after school sports, academic clubs, etc.).

When the student works backwards from the career choice all the way to high school, she knows exactly what she will need to do in high school go get into college, then law school, and then practice law. Nothing is left to chance or luck. Everything is attainable and depends solely on her efforts. Everything happens one step at a time.

Unfortunately, most students don't follow this easy, step-by-step path. They don't plan and execute their plan. Instead, they take it one step at a time and hope for the best. They do what they can in high school, then take the SAT/ACT, apply to different colleges and hope to get accepted somewhere. Subsequently, they attend the college that grants them admission. In college, because they don't have a plan, they start wondering between majors and career choices. They allow themselves to aimlessly wonder through college and waste a lot of valuable time. After graduating college, they decide to go to graduate school. Now, they have to find and apply to schools which will accept their undergraduate work, GPA, and the graduate admissions exam scores (which they probably hadn't even planned on taking). Suddenly they realize that the graduate admissions exam (e.g.LSAT for law schools) requires strong reading and composition skills which they don't have because they majored in engineering. Consequently, they have to go back to college and take several English courses. Yet another waste of valuable time.

Therefore, it is extremely important for each student to plan by reverse engineering and then take the necessary steps toward their profession. Its a time-tested system that works. This system is used in anything that needs to be built, whether its a career or a house. First you have a vision of what the end product will be, then you work backwards to plan the entire project. Then you take that plan and start building one step at a time.