Smashingchemistry.com



Planning for your SMASHING Future! Section 2: Choosing the most Smashing university course in the worldWhat you will produceAt the end of this exercise you will have completed at least 5 career profiles and at least 5 degree profiles. You will also look at least 5 different universities in at least 2 different countries, including the UK. Use the worksheets in section 3 to record you answers.Choosing a career pathThink about the kind of work you want to do, but you should also look at other careers. Each of your AS levels should give you at least one possible career path (e.g. if you study economics you could look at management careers, or for biology you could look at bioengineering). You should explore at least 5 different careers in this session. Other searches you could also look at include Googleing “highest paid job”, “best job satisfaction”. The skill in using the internet is to ask the right question so “job with most stress” might be a better search term than simply “worst job” (which career has the highest suicide rate do you think?). at the website above for information about different kinds of careers. Some of the important things to think about include:Number of working hours per weekSalary What kind of work will you be doing: will be it be indoors, outdoors, in a lab, in an office etc.Education – do you need a postgraduate degree (e.g. a Ph.D.), and do you need a professional qualification, e.g. to become a pharmacist or lawyerAdvancement – What can you go on to do (usually involves becoming part of management)Employment – Where do people work: university, private sector (for companies), non-governmental organisations (charities), or governmentJob outlook – in the next few years is the job sector you are interested expected to grow, or shrink (will it be easier to find work or more difficult)Non-salary benefits to your chosen career (e.g. pensions, healthcare, childcare, rent) Now look at company websites that employ people in the kind of career you want. Go to their “Careers” section and see what kinds of experience and qualifications they are looking for. You can also often get career profiles where people who are actually working in the job talk about what they do (but remember they will only usually give you the positives, not the negatives!). E.g. for accountancy (a popular destination for chemistry undergraduates): that you’ve thought about careers you are ready to start to look at routes into these types of careers.Choosing a degreeWhere do you want to work?Where you want to work can affect which country you need to do your undergraduate degree in! Look at these websites to get some idea of the visa requirements of different countries. Remember if the website ends in “.gov” it is a government website, they will give a different perspective (possibly more honest) to a website with “.com” or “.org” which usually are run by companies trying to sell you their services. For other countries, simply Google “work visa (country)”. For the US: the UK: Canada the right degreeThis website is particularly good: British universities this is also excellent: the right universityThink about which university you think you want to go to, then look at its webpage for more information about application procedures for your chosen course and the kinds of qualifications and experience expected. Also look at the university’s Wikipedia page, often it will provide a great deal of excellent information, including its rank in different ranking tables. Also look at the university’s student union website, what kinds of clubs and societies they run, if there is one which you are particularly interested in or have done before, it might be something worth mentioning in your personal statement. With regards to SAT scores needed, this is a very good website which also has information about rankings based on entrant qualifications (perhaps one of the most useful ranking systems). ranking informationRemember, these lists are just an opinion. Just because a list gives a good ranking to an institution doesn’t mean that you will be able to get a good job afterwards (employability of the graduates is just one of the things that they are measuring!). Also some ranking systems allow universities to buy a higher place, so be careful with how you use the information. For the world: the USThis is sometimes considered the best another perspective try this one the UK (considered the best) funding for US universitiesEach university has different funding regulations, so you should look at individual university websites, but this is a good general website: things to think aboutSandwich degrees – These allow you to spend a certain amount of time, e.g. 6 months or a year either in another university or in industry, which will allow you to get extra work experience which can sometimes be necessary to get a good a good job at the end.Postgraduate study – It is sometimes possible to do a degree in one subject (or university or country) and then do a different postgraduate degree afterwards, so if you really want to be a Harvard graduate, you don’t necessarily need to get into Harvard to study as an undergraduate, if you do really well in your degree you could do, for instance, a Master’s degree there!Other websitesGoogle these terms to find out more about other topics:US College Board (for info on SAT) “Personal statement examples” and “personal statement advice” (see also the UCAS website).“Writing an effective common application essay”, and “common application essay examples”. Remember the entry essays are often different for different colleges that don’t use the common application, and sometimes also for ones that do!Quality (i.e catering for university educated people) newspapers tend to also have their own sections about advice on universities and entrance procedures e.g.: HYPERLINK "" ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download