When I was in school, I studied academically at two levels (which I could, because Allah blessed me with sufficient intelligence). One level was what I considered ‘true’ studying, which is learning the subject with the intention of actually understanding it and becoming knowledgeable in it. The other level was learning the subject in order to do well in it during examinations, so that on paper I also looked good. I did this when I realised that sometimes what does well in the exam paper, isn’t very well related to what I might do or the effort I might put in, for true learning. Yet the paper scores are of the utmost importance if I wanted to have my pick of universities. After that ‘exam gate’, I could focus more purely on just learning the subject, but before it, I must study to score in exams.

If you can, I would advise you to do your best to balance both. The certificate, because it gives you choice, a highly important thing in competitive educational environments such as the US. But the actual learning as well, because this is your formative years, and the habits you cultivate and what you learned during it (not just academic but extra-curricular and hobbies too) will help you in the period immediately after you graduate (first job) and boosts your learning in the longer-term. Peers who focused only on the certificate for their entire schooling life, will fall behind at this stage.

(I am assuming of course that – since we are Muslims – we are talking about useful employment, not those jobs where you do little that is useful and skim off the work and ideas of others.)

College Applicants Sweat The SATs. Perhaps They Shouldn’t
by ERIC WESTERVELT
February 18, 2014 3:29 AM

http://www.npr.org/2014/02/18/277059528/college-applicants-sweat-the-sats-perhaps-they-shouldn-t

This is an enlightening paper:

The Pedagogical Divide: Toward an Islamic Pedagogy

Nadeem Memon, PhD Candidate, OISE/UT
Qaiser Ahmad, M.Ed, OISE/UT

Abstract:
The past decade of educational research on Islamic education has increasingly adopted language and trends common to mainstream market-driven educational practices. In the push toward making Islamic schools more effective, mainstream conceptions of effectiveness, efficiency, and
accountability have been employed without critical reflection on the values they promote.

Several issues and concerns relating both to the purpose of an Islamic education and the values promoted through neo-liberal educational practices, call for a philosophical inquiry. This paper is divided into two sections. The first section addresses the purpose of mainstream public
education and the neo-liberal agenda from a critical pedagogical perspective. The second section critically examines how Muslim educators in North America have attempted to negotiate an Islamic education within prevailing discourses of mainstream educational practices. Issues of the purpose of an Islamic education and the criteria, standards, and norms used to determine the
quality of Islamic education will be addressed. It will be argued that without such critical analysis, Islamic schooling reproduces existing dominant values and promotes, often unintentionally, success in the market economy as an end rather than a means. In contrast, we propose a foundational return to an Islamic pedagogy that transforms the heart and brings out one’s humanity through the enactment of an Adamic education based on an Islamic epistemological framework.

http://razigroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/nadeem_memon_and_qaiser_ahmad_2006_the_pedagogical_divide.pdf

http://islamicteachereducation.com/

Sr. Amara I actually started a project to help prevent what happened to you and the many Muslims in college today regarding mismatched careers and majors: http://www.hidayahservices.com.

Subhan’Allah, I wrote about exactly the same thing this morning on my blog about the education in UK.