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Career TRUTHS: After High School -: An Honest Look at College, Careers and Life After Graduation
Paperback
Series: Career Truths
Publisher: C2 Consulting
Published: Jun 15 2026
Pages: 114
Weight: 0.36
Height: 0.24 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The decision after high school is the biggest one most families
make together. The advice is everywhere. The facts are not.
Follow your passion. Get the degree. The trades are what you do if
college doesn't work out. Your son or daughter hears all of it, usually
from people who mean well.
Career TRUTHS: After High School is an honest, research-backed guide to the years between eighth
grade and the first real decision. It takes college seriously, because a
bachelor's degree still pays on average. It takes the trades just as
seriously, because for some students that is the better answer. It does
not tell you which one is yours. It gives you what you need to work that
out together.
What's inside:
- The Passion Trap. Why follow your passion is a difficult
place to start, and what Stanford's research on how interests really form
found instead. - The College Default. College still pays on average. But more
than a quarter of bachelor's programs leave graduates no better off, and
that average hides an enormous range. - The Four-Year Track. What colleges really weigh, drawn from a
survey of 185 admissions offices. The return of the SAT and ACT. Why the
published cost is not what families pay. - The Trade Track. What the work really pays, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics. The four ways in, and six questions to ask any
program before you pay it a dollar. - A chapter for parents. There are two ways to get this wrong,
and most of us only worry about one of them. - A guest chapter from Stephen J. Henning, Managing Partner of
Wood Smith Henning & Berman LLP, on how a college essay is written years
before anyone sits down to type it. - Year-by-year checklists from eighth grade through senior year,
plus a parent's progress checklist that marks who owns what.
The numbers stay current. QR codes throughout link to a free
companion site where the wage tables, testing policies and cost figures
are updated as new federal data is released. A printed table goes stale.
This one does not.
Straight talk, real exercises, no hype. Written by James E.
Willett, who spent more than three decades hiring, mentoring and promoting
people, and who raised two sons through this same decision.
For students in grades 8 through 12, for the parents walking beside
them, and for the counselors who have this conversation all year.
Also from
Willett, James E.
Career TRUTHS: Managing Your Personal Brand -: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Shape It on Purpose
Willett, James E.
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