How can you maximize returns from your college investment?

This article gives specific suggestions that will help college students to use their college years effectively and to maximize their chances of getting good jobs quickly after graduating.

Getting accepted into a good college is an important career milestone accomplishment, but this is just the first of many important career challenges. The more excellent the early career accomplishments are, the more likely it is that the later career accomplishments also will be excellent.

Too many students, upon starting college, think that all they have to do is to keep from getting low grades in too many courses. A high grade point average (GPA), however, will impress potential employers. Making the dean’s list in college, for example, is similar to making the honor society list in high school.

Potential employers have good reasons to be impressed by graduates with high GPAs. These employers know that college graduates with high GPAs have mastered much of the professional knowledge that they will need to do their entry level jobs, and that they will be more likely to quickly perform productively without extensive training.

Potential employers also are impressed by college graduates who have double majors or by those who graduate early. Along with high GPAs, such achievements indicate graduates who are quick learners, who have a strong work ethic, or both. High school students can get a head start on college courses with CLEP Tests and AP courses.

Potential employers also can be impressed by graduates who have taken elective courses that are useful in the careers that these graduates want to pursue with interviewing employers. Those who take challenging, relevant electives are more unforgettable to potential employers than are those graduates who have taken easy, courses that are not relevant to the jobs for which they are interviewing.

The right extracurricular activities also will impress potential employers. Potential employers know that these extracurricular activities have taught potential employees vital skills that are not easy to teach in classrooms.

While still in college, a student would do well to join a professional organization appropriate for her intended career. Doing so will give her the most current professional knowledge, and that most current professional knowledge will impress her instructors and fellow students. Joining an appropriate professional organization also will demonstrate her dedication to lifelong learning, which is important to potential employers.

It is crucial to impress instructors, not only to earn good grades, but also to inspire good future recommendations that instructors often give to potential employers. Instructors frequently know many employers at work sites related to the courses taught by these instructors.

It also is helpful to impress fellow students. In the future, some of these fellow students might be working for employers for whom job seekers want to work. These employed students can at least give job seekers good information about their employers, and they might even be able to put in a good word for the job seekers.

Robert Anthony said it well when he declared, "Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle."

A freelance writepaperforme journalist engaged in environmental activism