Gaining Entrance to College for the Non-Traditional Student

College Entrance exams

The big thing to remember about college is that prospective students can begin attending any semester; fall, spring, or summer. 

 

Getting accepted into college is no easy task.  College admission boards prefer intelligent, well-rounded students.  While the category percentages may vary, the boards look for good school grades and/or a high performance on the S.A.T.’s [Scholastic Assessment Tests] as proof of academic accomplishment.  Well-rounded students probably participated in sports and belonged to clubs in high school.  Traditional prospective college students volunteer their time at churches, hospitals, or community functions. 

 

You know, a person who never sleeps, has no time for family or friends.  These are tough sneakers to fill for a non-traditional student, a student over 30 years of age beginning college for the first time. 

 

This was one reason why I started at a community college or junior colleges as they are sometimes called.  Since I was a non-traditional student, with no S.A.T. scores, I needed to take a basic skills test, an entrance exam, to be sure I was prepared for college level math and writing. 

 

Okay, so I was only partially prepared for college, passing the writing portion of the entrance exam, not the math.  I didn’t have a college preparatory high school curriculum.  I was a business student.  I haven’t done algebra and rational numbers and integers, etc., for a long, long time.  I required basic skills math courses to bring me up to college-level math in order to complete the math and science requirements needed for a college degree.       

 

And that is where my college journey begins in the memoir: deciding to apply and take the entrance exam at a community college—with five children in tow for most of it.  However, even though I started at a community college, the possibilities from there were numerous.  I’ll discuss some of those possibilities together with scholarship next month.