If you’re a service member, there are ways to integrate your military experience and training into your college life before you ever hit the job market. We’ll take you through a few of the most useful ways that service members can use their experiences in a college environment.
The College Application Essay
Almost every college requires that its applicants submit an essay or cover letter as part of the admissions process. Generally, colleges are looking for inspirational life stories and clearly-oriented goals and plans in these letters.
Still, with so many possibilities and so much competition, it can be hard to know where to begin. Anyone with a military background can use it to their advantage here by using stories of hard work and persistence from military life to lift the application from the mundane piles of them that administrators go through daily.
Get an Edge on Jobs that Are Military-Centric
There are several jobs out there that anyone with a military background has a good chance of getting. For example, if someone wanted to teach military history someday, this kind of background would make them stand out as a potential candidate for a full-time position.
A master degree in military history requires such benchmarks as a history of global warfare through the ages, the social, cultural and economic impacts of war, and proper knowledge of warfare in various theatres of operation.
Military personnel will have learned much of this already and will likely have firsthand experience in some aspects of it, such as how different conflicts have been fought and resolved.
Use Military Experience for Technical Jobs
Much of the training that goes on in the military is just as mental as it is physical. Military personnel are expected to be able to assess and analyze a given situation, identify potential problems, offer solutions, and then execute those plans in a prompt fashion.
All of this training makes service members ideal candidates for jobs such as civil engineering, which relies heavily on analytics, logic, and problem-solving to carry out some of the most complex, expensive building projects ever seen.
Gain Extra Credits
Someone who has served is able to segue much of their experience into extra college credits. Although credit transfer policies vary widely from school to school, many of them translate military experience into college credit right from the start, especially in terms of leadership courses.
Once a military member learns the specific policies of the school they wish to attend, they might gain a big head start on their degrees before they even attend their first class.
There are many ways those that serve can use their military experience to their own advantage for colleges. In this competitive modern world, it pays to know of all possible options that can grant someone the edge they need to succeed.