College choice roadmaps p1 - Military - Career Choices - Military Times EDGE

Army Staff Sgt. Jason Van Steenbergen hopes his degree leads to a career with the FBI. The 33-year-old stationed at Fort Carson, Colo., is working on a bachelor’s degree in technical management with an emphasis in criminal justice from DeVry University.

His best advice for getting on the road to a degree: “Start school right away. Don’t wait until you’re a higher rank. You aren’t going to have nearly the time you had when you are, say, a private.”

Van Steenbergen speaks from experience. He joined the military in 1998 after taking some community college courses and attending DeVry for two semesters. Now in his second go-’round at DeVry, he expects to graduate in June 2011.

Whether you’re plotting your course toward a short- or long-term destination — getting a few courses under your belt at a community college or earning an advanced degree from a prestigious research institution — here’s how the experts recommend getting started.

Learner’s permit

“If you don’t know anything [about college], you need to put yourself in the hands of someone you can trust and someone who knows what they are doing,” said former Marine Sgt. Sean-Michael Green, new dean of graduate and adult enrollment at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and author of the book “Marching to College: Turning Military Experience into College Admissions.”

For those on active duty, your base education office is a good place to start.

Bear in mind, however, “You have to know where people are coming from,” Green said. “You talk to the ESO on base, and that person has been in his job for three weeks. He might have the information, but not with the wisdom that comes with a career in this line of work.”

Another thing to consider: Many education advisers — especially on larger installations — only have so many appointments in a day but possibly hundreds of people they need to talk to.

Green advises talking to college admissions officers and representatives from on-base colleges and universities. And ask not just about their schools but other schools you are interested in as well.

“Talk to three different institutions about a fourth one,” Green suggested. “If they all say, ‘Hey, I think they are having problems with accreditation right now,’ you can believe it.”

Just consider carefully any advice from your friends, Green said.

“If you are on active duty and you are talking to people beside you, their realm of knowledge is limited,” he said. “At the same time, they are coming from the same background as you ... so the advice will be relevant.”

Good directions

You need to ask the right questions if you want to avoid a wrong turn, Green said. “Figure out what your goals are and figure out how a particular institution is going to help you achieve your goals.”

Not sure how to even begin to determine your goals, much less begin to act on them? Consider these pointers from the pros:

1. Find your home base: Consider where you want to live once you’re out of the military, said Julia O’Dell, associate director of the University of Kansas Veterans Upward Bound program. “If you are from rural South Dakota and you are absolutely sure you are going home, the job market there might be at the forefront of your research and discussion,” O’Dell said.

2. Do a career assessment: “Veterans more so than others don’t have flexibility to spend a lot of time with career decision-making once they start college,” O’Dell said. “If you are 18 and start college and change your mind after three or four years, it’s not a big deal. If you are 35 or 40, you can’t really goof around and change your mind — or your major — after two years.”

O’Dell recommends going online and doing career assessments — note the plural. “Don’t just take the first one and say, ‘Voilà! I should be an accountant,’” she said. “Do four or five, and hopefully it will start to come together what works for you.”

O’Dell cautioned that the career-assessment process often is more challenging for active-duty personnel, particularly those who are or recently have been deployed. Because they are, or were, in a vastly different environment than they are going to be in several years down the road, their recent life experiences may skew their answers.

3. Decide how you want to ‘do’ college:

Consider these three tracks, said Randy Plunkett, a retired Air Force senior master sergeant and DeVry University’s national director of military affairs:

• Do you want to go full-bore and try to do a big chunk of college while you are in the military?

• Do you want to take some general education classes with the intent of having them transfer back to a four-year college or university when you get out of uniform?

• Do you want to concentrate on your military career and just do college when you get out?

4. Deal with the ‘major’ conundrum: Choosing what you want to major in will, at least in part, dictate where you go to school. Unable to decide on a major? Start taking classes anyway.

“Focus on your general-education credits,” Plunkett said.

Community colleges are great places to take such classes, since it’s a pretty safe bet that your general-education credits will transfer elsewhere, O’Dell said.

“Community colleges, for the most part, are created equal,” Green said. “A community college in one area corresponds to a community college in another area. It’s a very safe way of getting started.”

5. Consider schools’ military-friendliness:

Plunkett and O’Dell offer up some questions to ask, including:

• How much of your military credit will the school accept?

• How many of those credits will count toward your degree?

• Does the school offer online classes in the event that you have to deploy?

• Does it let you mix and match online and traditional classes?

• What are the school’s enrollment and re-enrollment policies?

This last one is a big factor for Guard and Reserve members, Plunkett said. You may not want to get stuck at a school where, if you are activated for a year, you have to reapply when you return.

Your benefits

From taking a College Level Examination Program test for free to using tuition assistance or the GI Bill to fund your college education, experts agree that the best way to maximize these benefits is to actually use them.

A lot of service members don’t, said Charles Sidell, president of the Florida Advisory Council on Military Education — a problem he attributes to unfamiliarity with the rules surrounding their use. To make sure you are receiving everything to which you are entitled, visit your base education office and trusted Web sites such as VA’s www.gibill.va.gov.

Back on course

Finally, you may do everything right, only to discover that your college choice still feels wrong.

“You will know before anyone else when you start to struggle,” Sidell said. “Go talk to someone. The knee-jerk is not to say or do anything. You end up digging yourself a bigger hole. Go in and say, ‘I thought this was for me, but it isn’t.’ Maybe you can change majors or minors.”

Perhaps most importantly, Green said, don’t look at such situations as failures. “Every class you take, be learning something,” he said. “Sometimes, lessons you learn aren’t in the classroom — [they’re] about the classroom.”