Subscribe to the NCSA BlogBe happy with the first lily pad you land on!
September 8th, 2008 - byIt might be a good idea to find the right fit before college. Otherwise, you might end up hopping from place to place, like Paulo DosSantos. From the New Jerzey Sports blog:
Paul DosSantos has had to attend several schools to pursue his love of soccer. DosSantos would play in 22 games at Bethany during his freshman year. He would not attend any schools during the 05-06 school year, before attending Centennial College to stay eligible to play soccer. He has started every game over his 3-year career at Felician College.
Don’t get me wrong — There’s nothing wrong with transferring. Sometimes, things just don’t work out a school for whatever reason, and as I wrote back in July, “if you’ve found yourself unhappy with your college choice for an extended period of time, transferring to another school that has what you’re looking for might be, and usually is, the best path to take.”
But taking on a frog-like mentality and leaping from lily pad-to-lily pad isn’t the recommended path to take. I say this for a couple of reasons:
- You have to go through the procedure of transferring and will have to face the consequences. In many cases, transferring requires you to sit out a year with your new team.
- You might not get completely comfortable with your new place. The best thing about my four years at Truman State was that it was my second home. If you’re bouncing around colleges, you might not and probably won’t get that feeling.
And finally, schools just might not be interested in you if they see you can’t stay in one place for an extended period of time.
[DosSantos] said no other school (sic) were looking at him before he transferred to Felician. He said he was interested in Felician and wanted to go.
There’s no shame in transferring, but my advice: Find the lily pad that you will be comfortable with before hopping on.
