Know The Right Tools To Graduate On Time?
Take The Quiz
Think of graduating as a project. You can complete projects more quickly with the right tools. Colleges have tools to help you graduate on time. Take the quiz to see if you know some of the best tools.
1. Colleges have an instruction and operating manual for completing a degree.
0 True 0 False
2. One of the very best friends you can make in college is your academic advisor.
0True 0 False
3. Colleges that have a tuition plateau policy allow you to take some courses for free.
0 True 0 False
4. Gateway courses and alternate year upper division courses may extend your time to degree.
0 True 0 False
5. A failing grade at your college cannot be removed by passing a comparable course at another college.
0 True 0 False
6. You have the ultimate responsibility to take the correct courses to complete your degree.
0 True 0 False
If you answered true to all the questions, you had the best answer in 100% of the questions. You know some of the best tools to graduate in a minimum time. Read Chapter Two for details on tools to graduate on time.
If you answered false to some of the questions you need to read Chapter Two to acquire the right tools to graduate on time.
Go to page 52 for a short explanation of the best answers to the Know The Right Tools To Graduate On Time? Quiz.



CHAPTER TWO—The Right Tools For Your Schedule
“If you know how to use the right
tools you can complete a project
much more quickly the right way.”
Your First Tool: The College Catalog
As Deans (or administrators) we have talked to students and parents about the college selection process and later, during new student registration, about choosing academic programs. It was readily apparent students had invested more time in the college selection process than in the process to select major and initial courses. Students often were not prepared for the registration process. This is not surprising. The registration process is new, the terminology is new, and the selection of courses requires advance knowledge of the degree program requirements.
Taken From Neal’s Real Life
It was my turn to take our youngest son, Jamie, to freshmen registration day at the college he had chosen to attend. Despite all the coaching, Jamie had not spent significant time reading the college catalog. This is typical of many high school seniors—even my own.
The only real opportunity to read the college catalog was during the three-hour plus trip on the morning of his registration day. Like many students entering college, he really did not know what he wanted to be or major in. At the time he was talking about eventually going to law school so a pre-law program would have been a reasonable place to start. I asked Jamie to find the pages in the catalog that listed the titles for the general education courses and to highlight at least 15 courses that interested him. If he was unsure about what the course was about, he could look up the description in the appropriate section of the catalog. It took him about an hour for this exercise and when he was done, I asked him to read the course titles to me as we went along.
It was clear to me that the majority of the courses he had selected would not be a part of a typical pre-law program; e.g., he had not highlighted any courses in political science. This does not mean that he had eliminated entering law as a profession. It did mean that the typical content areas for pre-law were not of much interest to him. What he had highlighted were a significant number of courses in the communications area.
It was going to be difficult to get the right class schedule. He was not in one of the first registration groups. But Jamie did get the right class schedule and he was among the first students in his group to finish registering! This was not the case for some other new students. I discovered some frustrated parents as they shared their experiences with the process at the end of the day. When I told them the advice that I had provided my son, the common comments were:
“How did you know what to tell him?” “I wish that I had known some of these things before today.”
Ultimately, Jamie graduated on his schedule of four years with a major in communications and a minor in marketing. Graduating in four years may not have been possible if he had gone the pre-law route in the beginning. Jamie breezed through registration that day because I was able to interpret quickly the catalog requirements for his degree. He stuck to his schedule and graduated according to his plan because he was willing to be honest about his goals and thoroughly understand his college catalog. He made it work for him and not the other way around.
The good news is that there is an instruction and operating manual to graduate from college—the college catalog. The bad news is that you may need a college experience and graduate before you can read it! College catalogs are not written in a how-to format for you or your parents. The knowledge—interpreting the catalog—that I used to assist Jamie is an example of knowledge from experience that can also help you.

Tip: College catalogs/bulletins can be found on the website for the college. Many colleges no longer provide a hard copy catalog/bulletin. The college catalog/bulletin is the instruction and operating manual for completing a degree. It is a critical tool that you need—along with this book—to complete your degree on time.