Ready for College Readiness
By Julie Walker | January 2019
What is college readiness? How can it be measured? A basic definition is: a set of skills, knowledge, and behaviors a high school student should have upon graduation and entering their freshman year of college. Skills and knowledge refer to a well-rounded education that includes common core areas, possibly a foreign language, and other state required subjects like fine arts, digital studies, health and fitness, and career and technical education. The benchmarks for these college readiness skills are easily measured by assessments such as the ACT, GPA, skills tests, class rank, standardized tests, etc. Other skills for college readiness include mindsets and behaviors. These skills are more difficult to measure and can be very subjective. However, they are no less important than knowledge.
Below are some of the basic skills, often called “soft skills,” that are crucial for college and career success.
Julie Walker is USCA middle school VP-elect.
Below are some of the basic skills, often called “soft skills,” that are crucial for college and career success.
- Self-management: Especially for students who move away from home for college, self management is an important skill. College tends to have less structure than high school. Instead of a solid, seven-hour school day, classes may be at random times during the day with hours between classes. Students living away from home for the first time may stay up until 3 a.m., skip class, procrastinate the completion of an assignment or eat ice cream for dinner. Although these behaviors are okay every once in a while, allowing them to become habits could be detrimental to a student’s health and success. Students need to learn good and healthy habits that they can maintain without parents’ nagging.
- Communication: Being able to effectively express thoughts, feelings, ideas and challenges to others is a necessary skill in navigating classes, dealing with roommates and talking to professors and others. Students must be able to listen to others and share their own ideas in both written and oral format. They also need to learn the different types of communication styles, which vary depending on the audience. For instance, they will communicate differently with friends and roommates than with a boss or a professor.
- Collaboration: Learning to work with others is essential in almost all careers. College classes give students the opportunity to work with people with different life experiences, values, ideas and backgrounds. Students are better prepared if they see differences as a way to make a project better instead of seeing them as a threat. They also must be prepared to deal with conflicts and disagreements in a respectful way. It is okay to disagree, but it is not okay to ridicule and demean others’ ideas and values.
- Setting personal goals: Goal setting is an important skill to learn throughout life, but especially to be college ready. Students who learn to set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) goals will achieve more success and create more opportunities. They will also feel a greater sense of accomplishment, which will lead to more confidence in their abilities and greater motivation to keep moving forward.
Problem solving and critical thinking: Students will need these skills as they encounter college classes that may be less cut and dried than a high school class. They will be challenged and pushed to the limits of their thinking beyond simply memorizing and reciting information. They will be asked to look at different viewpoints and tackle difficult questions. They also need to learn persistence and have a willingness to embrace failure. Failure need not be seen as the end, but as a beginning to higher learning and greater success.
Julie Walker is USCA middle school VP-elect.