Adele Scheele, a widely published career strategist, has created a roadmap designed to inspire students to use their time wisely, to help their parents become better coaches to their children, and to empower college faculty and administrators to become more active mentors.

Only a fraction of students actually know how to use college as a stepping-stone for educational exploration and social connection. Most students are keenly disappointed when the expected transformation from college to career does not automatically happen. They do not know that they have to make it happen through their own engagement. Packed with practical and accessible advice, Scheele’s approach provides critical strategies to the burgeoning number of students-whether they are children of advantaged parents or children of immigrants, high school students anticipating their college career, or adult women re-entering college after years of working or childrearing. All students are seeking the American Dream, hoping that the secret to success will be included with their diplomas. Launch Your Career in College provides a guide to maximizing the return on their educational investment.

Offering practical and accessible advice for college students, Launch Your Career in College offers a guide to maximizing the return on students’ and their parents’ financial and educational investments. College is an experiment in hope. It is an expensive investment of time-often more than four years-and of money-anywhere from $4000 to $40,000 per year. Yet the biggest investment, by far, is that of hope-hope that by simply attending college students will be able to turn their majors into successful careers and rewarding lives. Students and their parents expect that college will be the single transforming agent to make them acceptable, valuable, knowledgeable, professional, and employable. Seldom is this expectation voiced, but it is there, deeply embedded in our views about higher education. It is not just hoped for. It is believed to be true. This books can help students, educators, and parents make that hope a reality.