To evaluate one of the most important decisions of your life – coming to college.

What you need - As in most of our exercises, all you need is some writing material, some introspection, and this time, perhaps some time with some significant others (family, friends, spouses).

Procedure - In a country like the US, where only between 15%-20% (average estimate is 18.5%) of the population goes through college and gets a degree, you are one of a minority.

Answer the following:
1. When you made your decision to go to college, what were your options?
2. Did you use any tools like cost-benefit analyses, decision trees, central-satellite models? List them.
3. Did you undergo any periods of indecisiveness or fear of making a wrong decision? If so, how much time did you spend in this state, and did that delay have any consequences? Or did it just give you time to get used to the idea of what the decision entails and what it will change in your life?
4. Did you consult with other people/resources in order to decide to go to college?

5. Was there any indication of risk involved? (Perhaps leaving a job or a place you grew up in or seeking a major you’re not sure about, etc.)
6. Are you happy with the decision you made? List some of the benefits and the costs you have experienced with this decision. While filling out the following form, assign a number to each cost and benefit based on how important it is. These weights are arbitrary and can range from 1 to 10. (For instance, for me, the benefit of a great education and a degree is weighted 8, much more than the benefit of seeing a new place, which would be weighted 4. Similarly, the cost of leaving my family behind to come pursue this program is 10, while the cost of having to live in snow-bound weather for four months of the year may be 5!)

Interpretation- The final tally should tell you if you are satisfied with your decision or not. If you come up with a negative total, obviously the costs outweigh the benefits, and you need to reconsider the decision. The magnitude (or amount) of satisfaction or dissatisfaction is shown by the number itself.

Follow-up -This is a rough and ready way (definitely not an objective method!) to evaluate decisions and their outcomes. In fact, a good idea would be to keep doing this periodically (perhaps once every year of college) to see if there have been changes. For instance, if you did this as a freshman, and saw that the costs column was very high due to the actual money costs involved in paying for college, perhaps you could attempt to reduce that by getting a job, so that as a sophomore, the costs column would show a lower number.
Back to the syllabus.