Need Career Help? | Advice for High School Students

[levisisme]

salutations, i am a student in the first semester of grade ten, i plan to take physics, chemistry, and electronics, and of course general science. I was wondering if someone could explain to me how the whole degree, credits, undergrad and college and university things work. I would like to become a scientist or an electronics technician. Maybe you guys can help me. Thanks Levi

 

[story645]

I was wondering if someone could explain to me how the whole degree, credits, undergrad and college and university things work.

You don't have anyone at your school (like a college advisor?) who could sort this out for you? wiki offers pretty thorough discussions on all of these, but basically:

degree - the piece of paper at the end of your coursework that says you've completed all the work you were supposed to (the same as a high school degree)

credits - unit hours for work completed over a semester. Basically, every course you take has a certain number of credits assigned to it, and at the end of the semester you get those credits for completing the work.

Credits and degrees:
Liberal arts degrees at my school are 120 credits. The liberal arts core (general education requirements) is about 40 credits, and most majors only require 30 degrees of major specific classes, so their are 120-40-30 = 50 credits left of coursework that a student needs to take to get the degree. Those credits are called free electives.

undergrad - undergraduate, any degree program that leads to a bachelors degree.

college - any school that only offers bachelors degrees

university - a school that offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, often a collection of colleges and professional schools

I would like to become a scientist or an electronics technician.

Those have very different career paths. To be a technician, you're looking at associates degree programs at technical schools like devry. To be a scientist, the standard route is a bachelors, masters and phd (often the masters and phd is combined into one program.)

 

[levisisme]

Thank you, this has been very helpful, and has also cleared things up for me. In the field of electronics, it is best to have multiple degrees i have been told, so i plan to get plenty withing my interest range. That will open up a lot of doors hopefully.

 

[Math Is Hard]

This is almost a duplicate of a thread in Academic Guidance. Please direct replies here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=366782

Thanks!