Decision Making

Abhinav Sawhney

Life at college is all about making the correct choices. In college there will be lots of times when one will be be presented with several options and paths. It's entirely upon the individual to choose what is right or wrong for them. It is impossible for a person to always make the correct decision, but a successful person is always one that makes more right choices than wrong.

The decision making process starts well before getting to college. The first thing a student has to decide is what college they want to go to. Several factors influence this decision. The first and probably the most important being the choice of major. Some colleges are favorable for certain courses more than others. An example would be how Georgia Tech specializes at its engineering courses. The next factor influencing the choice of college is the cost. A college education is extremely expensive so families must consider their financial situation before applying to certain colleges. Proximity from home also plays an important role when deciding where to study. Individuals who know that they get homesick a lot will prefer to go to college somewhere near home. Once admitted to college a lot of other choices are presented to you.

One of these choices will be whether or not to go "Greek," in other words whether or not to join a fraternity or sorority. This decision again varies from individual to individual. Some people can handle all the work from their fraternities/sororities as well as all the academic pressure. But there are others that can not perform this balancing act. So each person should consider their own style of working rather than being influenced by their peers.

A few weeks into college and one has to make a few more critical choices. This time I am talking about alcohol consumption. A lot of people tend to experiment with alcohol when in college. The reason for this being that parents are not present to take the right decision for you. So it is the job of the students to decide whether alcohol is good for them or not. They need to think about how it impacts their health, how it makes one loose control over him or herself, how it becomes the reason for a large percentage of the road accidents today.

So life in college is all about choices and decisions. If a student takes these decisions sensibly he or she is bound to meet success.