In this section

University is definitely not right for everyone just out of school, not even after a year out doing your own thing. So don't be forced by the expectations of those around you, and know the alternatives: there's a lot of them out there.

It's too easy to get on an escalator towards college or university, and you stop asking yourself important questions. Take the stairs!

It's rarely owned up to, but three or four years spent studying at university can sometimes severely dampen entrepreneurial and inventive spirit. It can often be best to get out into the very heart of the working world as soon as possible. After all, university courses will always be an option for you in one form or another a little later down the line when you're clearer about what you want to study, more confident in your approach to life, and wanting a change of pace.

Only 50% of British graduates take jobs that even remotely make use of the subject they studied at university degree, and this can be pretty demoralising.

Have you weighed up the pros & cons of going to university or college, and the pros and cons of going right now? You can postpone - not just for a year, but for two or three years 'till there's a course or university you desperately want to go to. By then, you'll have tasted the working world full-time and this will have developed and focused your ambitions. Or, rather than do a full-time college course, you could go part-time while you earn money in an apprenticeship for some profession. Later, you might choose to go to university full-time to do a one year masters or a three year doctorate in a specialist field of your own choosing. Bear in mind, too, that the extra personal confidence and focus that comes from postponing, could help you shine in both your studies and social life once you do reach university, so why rush it?

Professional-level mastery in any discipline is very likely achievable for any individual if there is adequate motivation and exposure to enriching learning environments. It is far more likely that it is limits on the availability and quality of that motivation and learning experiences that will limit progress, rather than the inhibition of 'inherited limits' within the individual. Innate limits to achievement may indeed exist, but in all practical terms these are, for the great majority of individuals, never reached.

Choose to study the subjects you love. School isn't the bus to university, and university isn't a departure lounge to life. You can't just hang around and bide your time waiting for some mythical future where the years of effort will miraculously pay off. Each part of your life is equally as valuable as any other, and so make sure you plan for it to be highly enjoyable as well as worthwhile - not just one or the other.

A Careers Guidance Counsellor should resist dismissing future possibilities for any particular youngster, because any apparent restrictions are very likely irrelevant once that young person has identified a sufficiently attractive goal and a sufficiently rich learning environment. This statement is founded on the likes of the work of the eminent educational psychologist, Michael J.A. Howe, who writes: "In principle, almost any person of normal intelligence may be capable of gaining virtually any exceptional ability. The idea that genetic factors severely limit the success of the individual at many intellectual skills, is false. Until that view is firmly scotched, many young people will continue to be prevented or discouraged from undertaking plans or pursuing ambitions that are in actuality quite realisable, so long as enough opportunities are made available and sufficient support and encouragement are forthcoming."

Be prepared to change subjects a few weeks in to your college course. Better to kick-up a fuss now, than spend years unhappily studying the wrong subject. Own up to the fact that you probably made your original choices a year or more ago, and you may have got it wrong back then. Be prepared to withdraw from one department and apply to another, or one university and apply to another. All sorts of people will moan at you and will pretend that it's just not possible. It is, of course, just as long as you're determined to work at it and make things happen.

It's very tempting to lie about what you want to do in the future because you're embarrassed to reveal your real aspirations and motivations. This is only hurting yourself in the long run, and you can even start believing your own PR. Best thing is to own up to what you think you want to do so that you can start testing out your expectations.

One thing they don't tell you in the adverts and brochures is that you can almost always take a year out of the middle of your course and postpone if you need to. It's an administrative hassle for the university so they don't encourage it, but it's your life, and you don't want to waste your college years if it's not working out at the moment.

People who over-specialise aren't being exposed to alternative disciplines. It's great feeling you know a subject well, but better still to know where it fits in to and can benefit from other areas. Why just major in German when you can do German and Business Studies? Or vice versa? Combinations like these are a good idea because they keep you thinking broadly and open useful doors of opportunity.

What are you hoping to achieve from your time at college. For instance, to give yourself a good chance of getting a first-class degree in Law at a highly competetive university could require you, or the vast majority of able students, to work a 6 day week for 10 hours per day 10 months of the year. Is that what you want? Consider whether there might be far greater total benefits in investing yourself more broadly.

Aim to be the best you can be in your particular niche, bearing in mind all your other goals. Mastery brings a great sense of satisfaction.

When arriving in a new institution, it can help to establish a niche for yourself, which can be a group of friends or something that you're good at, and from this foothold you can and should build other things.

Travel and work abroad in the long vacations. Introducing yourself to various professional fields and foreign cultures can help you see in which country and in which working world your particular strengths and ambitions might best be appreciated.

Try to not let your parents pay for everything through college. If you're always asking for cash, you don't get much of a sense of independence, and that dilutes the experience of freedom. Even taking on a few hours paid employment helps maintain a pleasing sense of self-respect.

University can be as narrow-minded and mediocre, or as useful and exciting as you chose to make it. The education isn't something that happens to you - where you go in as a 'uniformed school-student' and come out as a 'remarkable adult'. University is a diamond-mine, but you have to do a lot of digging through a lot of crap to turn up the occasional jewel.

I couldn't believe how fast the first year went. You've got to try and make it count, not just piss your college years away at parties with people you probably won't see again once you leave.

If you don't make appropriate plans for after college, you will end up back on your parent's doorstep. How will you make a life and earn a living, where, and with whom? The time to consider these things is not in your final year when there will be the year-long pressure of exams. Be thinking about life-after-college all the way through your college career from day one, so that your important decisions are the result of a well-developed and well-researched strategy, not a panic reaction.

At university, I felt that I didn't need Careers Counselling because I already knew exactly what I wanted to be: a 'Playboy'. I wanted a Lamborghini, leather-driving gloves, and ripe, bikinied lovers. Failing that, I vaguely hoped I would die before the working world got to me. I didn't - and it did.

I found it's too easy to ignore the world beyond the campus. There's so many distractions, but if you make an effort to get out, even if it's only working in a bar or something, it really pays off. You make new friends and it reminds you that you're going to have to leave someday soon and that you want to go on to even better things.

Career paths no longer have an intrinsic traction that pulls you forward so long as you sit tight. Career progression is no longer linear, nor automatic. It will have to be generated.

Working life is becoming increasingly 'project oriented' whereby the individual will have to deal with frequent change, and deal with the weeks or months of down-time between major projects. These features will favour two key character traits: first, that you are able to self-motivate and be wholly self-reliant in new work environments. You will be the centre of stability in your life. Second, that you continuously add to and upgrade your range of skills to keep up with the rapidly developing technologies, while it is taken as read that you can fluently communicate via all forms of media. How can you arrange it so that your college life prepares you for such a world?

There will be a direct correlation between your achievements after college and the level of self-responsibility you take for your own education and development while you are there.

On its own, a degree certificate is too vague and dilute a form of evidence about your abilities and passions. When you arrive at college, why not treat yourself to your own 'special training course' that might, for instance, include a foreign language, a musical instrument, some new technology skills and regularly leading some outwardbound activities. This way you can acquire useful new skills at your own pace, and not be restricted by the inevitable narrowness of your college course. This will take good planning and self-discipline on your part, but these are character traits you'll always be glad you improved upon. Your track-record of self-designed training experiences will speak for itself, and it will be evident to any potential employer that you are self-motivated, usefully skilled, and someone well worth taking on.