Why a Certificate Program is a Great Idea During Your Gap Year From College
In typical times, incoming college freshmen might take a gap year before college for various reasons. They might defer their start to save money, gain work experience, travel the world, or give back to their community through volunteering.
However, we are not living in typical times. Covid-19 is causing universities to go online or enforce social distancing on campus. As a result, prospective and matriculated college students are taking time off to avoid paying costly tuition for a university experience that is either online or affected by social distancing. According to one survey, 40 percent of incoming freshmen who planned to go to a residential four-year college were unlikely to attend college this fall.
If you are taking a gap year from college, but not sure how to spend it, here are some reasons you might consider Pathstream certificate programs which can teach you marketable skills:
Stand out from the competition as a job applicant. When you graduate from college and look for a full-time role, you’ll want to demonstrate to a hiring manager why you are more qualified for the job than the next applicant. Completing a certificate program can give you the skills required in high-demand areas like data analytics, digital marketing, Salesforce administration, and project management.
After completing a certificate program, your resume will include proficiency with tools such as Salesforce, Tableau, Google Analytics, and Asana. In job interviews, you’ll be able to speak to experiences such as building projects and budgets using project management software, creating a digital marketing campaign for a real company, or creating data visualization using Tableau to drive insights. Employers are increasingly seeing certifications as signals of a strong job candidate. According to research from CompTIA, an organization that certifies IT professionals, 93% of HR professionals say that certifications really stand out to employers in their field. Pathstream’s certification programs are designed to give you the skills you need to succeed in high-demand fields, which will give you a leg up in landing an interview once it’s time to job search.
Complement your college degree with job-aligned skills. It’s no secret that not all college degrees are sure paths to high earnings. According to research using data from the Department of Education, hundreds of thousands of students graduate from college every year with degrees that failed the “debt-to-income test” — a test that compares how much debt students take on compared to their salary potential. For students pursuing one of those degrees, however, a certificate program might be the factor that helps to overcome the odds of a typical graduate with that degree. A graduate with an English degree and a certificate in digital marketing, for example, might have a better chance of landing a copywriting role at a marketing agency than a graduate without the certificate program experience. By complementing your college degree with a certificate, you improve the chance that your college degree is a good investment.
Use this time to gain exposure to careers and companies. If your college experience is anything like mine was, you might approach college graduation without knowing what you want to do after college. I endlessly looked through job descriptions, wondering how my liberal arts degree was going to prepare me for a job in the real world. I ended up finding work that I love and appreciating the critical thinking skills that my liberal arts degree gave me, but in hindsight see how a certificate program would have helped me to figure out the jobs and companies I was most interested in. The hands-on projects in Pathstream courses allow you to experience the kind of work you might do in that field so that you can make an informed decision whether that field is interesting to you or not. Even while job and internship opportunities are limited, certificate programs can help you to narrow in on your career aspirations.
Whether you are a gap year student or a parent of a gap year student, you might feel uncertain about what lies ahead for your college experience. Certificate programs offer you a way to make your gap year an opportunity to develop new skills that build your self-understanding, digital skills, and job prospects.
Interested in signing up for a Pathstream certificate program? See all our program offerings here.
