For as many all-nighters you pull, tests you ace, and textbooks you read cover to cover, it only helps to prepare you to a certain extent for the real world. Do not get me wrong. The four years of education you get from college is so important. Yo need to know the facts and the basis for everything before you get thrown out into the real world. What sometimes people end up overlooking is how invaluable experience (of any kind) in your desired industry really is.

At first, we assume that the experience we desire to get our dream job cannot be obtained before we finish getting out a degree. You might not get the ideal experience that you want without a degree, but that does not mean you cannot get valuable and very practical experience. As long as you can put it on your resume and it pertains to your field, the experience you earn in college is nearly as important as your college education. Lots of people can memorize information and pass a class. Can they all take that information and not only understand it but apply it to real tasks? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

Your tuition allows you to have access to more career services than you might realize. Career fairs are phenomenal places to start, even just after your first year at school. At the very least, you want to get your name out there. Do not be afraid to take risks because the worst answer you can get is "no." The best place to start out is with internships. It does not matter how many concepts you can perfect in the classroom until you are able to apply them in real-world practices. These internships are where you really get your tuition's worth.

The first internship you get will not be as glamorous as you either expect or want. No matter where you start out in a company or how long you have been in school, companies will look to see that you are a good student. Your first internship most likely will not require a high level of expertise but your academic standing can say a lot about who you are as an individual. Many beginning internships with utilize your alphabetizing and sorting skills for jobs like filing and your communications skills for making phone calls. Doing these things alone, you might not benefit a whole lot, but being in the work environment will. As time progresses you will get opportunities to observe different people and even just hear what they discuss. Over time you will help people with the same tasks that you started out by watching them do. Your tuition's worth comes from these hands-on experiences that you learn and grow from.

Another huge part of the real world is connections. You connect with your peers and instructions in the classroom at college, but through your career services, you meet so many new people. Career fairs allow you to be introduced to countless companies, but once you work for a company, you get the chance to meet the people they connect with. The opportunity to network through internships and jobs with different companies is where you get to benefit from your tuition's worth.

It is no secret that sometimes college students can be all over the board. Too many times students will not decide until they are at the end of their sophomore year or even junior year of college to switch majors. More often than not this means that the chance of graduating in the traditional four years flies out the window. It takes students a lot longer to realize they are studying the wrong thing when the only time they are immersed in the field is just in the classroom at college. Internships are the next best thing besides the actual job to get that real-world perspective and outlook on a job in a particular career field. Unless you are close to someone who has the exact job you want to have, there is no telling what you will experience. You get to experience your tuition's worth through getting a real view of your future career field.

You put a lot of dollars in towards your tuition so you should be a way of where you can really benefit from it. It is not all about what you do in the classroom. There is so much more to the worth of your tuition. A majority of it comes from your community and all of the benefits from being at college. Be careful not to sacrifice too much for just the classroom aspect of it. Your tuition's worth is found in the career resources you get, opportunities for real-world experience, and chances to network with a variety of people. Do not forget to capitalize on these things.