What Course to Select for Pre-University course? Study Career Path Ahead for SSLC Students

Right after SSLC, the students will have questions as to what courses to choose for PUC or 10 plus . Pre-University College offers different specializations (streams) for students to select. What stream to go for further studies, whether arts, commerce or science?  A big next question for most of the students who are just completing their SSLC.  Some students think the selection of these streams depend on the SSLC Exam results. Not at all. This is not true. It solely depends on the interest of students. In several cases, the students will have no idea on what they are going to study after their SSLC. They do not even think ahead in time until they finish the current study. In this post I'm going to talk about various options available in PUC courses and guidelines as to how the students & parents have to discuss and select the courses.

Broadly the PUC courses are categorized as Arts, Commerce & Science which will be of duration 2 years conducted by state education boards across India. In order to make an entry to any Indian Universities, the student has to pass through this course as well as another exam called CET (Common Entrance Test). Arts is Bachelor of Arts (B.A). Commerce is related to business management you will have subjects such as accountancy, statistics etc. Science has different options such PCMB, PCMC, CBZ where P-Physics, C-Chemistry, M-Mathematics, B-Biology, Z-Zoology & C-Computers (in PCMC). Science is a different story altogether compared to Arts & Commerce. Arts & Science are entirely different streams of study. And making a decision to choose these options plays base role in your entire career. This decision should be made 100% perfect with full confidence.

Selecting Science enables you to pursue Bachelor of Engineering(B.E) or Bachelor of Science (BSc) further after your PUC. Arts enables you to pursue Master of Arts (M.A) and then you can also go for B.A, LLB that relates to study of Law. Commerce helps you to pursue courses MBA, BBM etc further in your study career paths.

You can study what are different subjects of different streams and explore more and that is not a big deal. But the point is to think well ahead before making the decision to select the courses. Parents have to first understand their kids' interest and extra caution has to be taken not to force them to go for a particular course if kids are not at all interested in those courses. There are examples where students just followed their parents and stuck in between the course and did not do well in exams. If student is not interested in a particular course, all efforts to convince him about 'the' course will be in vain. If student is capable of doing the course however he/she is not aware of the future benefits then parents and student can discuss and come to a common understanding on the courses to take up.

Once the course is taken, initially it may be bit difficult to grasp and understand the subjects especially when it comes to science. But there is no reason to get demotivated.  Students should just keep going and making continuous efforts to understand the subjects and in few months, they get used to it. Even if students fail to score good marks in the first year of PUC, that should be okay. However, in the 2nd PUC, all possible efforts have to be made to understand the subjects and not just studying for the sake of scoring good marks.

A proper guidance is required here. Your goal is to get a job of your interest and students may want to go for job oriented courses. What course leads to what jobs should be well understood by the students and this would be the biggest motivation factor for studying. For example, if students opt to go with science, then they have to prepare for CET exam right from the beginning of 2nd year at least. CET is required to select engineering colleges. People who go for arts will go for M.A and they mostly go into teaching profession. So students need to make a right decision may be by taking help of parents and their teachers friends and take sufficient time to decide on this. 

Also see ,

(1)   How to prepare  for SSLC Exams?

(2)  What branch to select for an engineering degree?

Hope this post triggers some thoughts while choosing the PU Courses and studying the subjects.