Austin Saliu is an undergraduate student at Small Maritime University (SMU). He is considering whether to continue at this university or to transfer to one with a nationally recognized engineering program. Austin's decision-making process included the following:
a. He surfed the web to check out the sites of a number of universities with engineering programs.
b. Austin wrote to five of the universities to obtain information on their engineering programs, tuition and room and board costs, the likelihood of being accepted, and so on.
c. Austin compared costs of the five other schools with the cost of his present school. He totalled the balance in his chequing and savings accounts, estimated the earnings from his work-study job, and asked his parents whether they would be able to help him out.
d. Austin's high-school sweetheart had a long heart-to-heart talk with him about their future-specifically, that there might be no future if he left town.
e. Austin thought that while he enjoyed his present university, its engineering program did not have the national reputation that would enable him to get a good job in a major city. Working for a large company in a major city was an important dream of his.
f. Austin's major advisor agreed that a school with a national reputation would make job hunting easier. However, he reminded Austin that graduates of small universities had occasionally gotten the kind of jobs that Austin wanted.
g. Austin had a number of good friends at SMU, and they were encouraging him to stay.
h. A friend of Austin's from high school returned home for a long weekend. She attends a prestigious university and told Austin of the fun and opportunities available at her school. She encouraged Austin to check out the possibilities elsewhere.
i. A friendly professor outside of Austin's major area ran into him at the student union. She listened to his thinking and reminded him that a degree from SMU would easily get him into a good graduate program. Perhaps he should consider postponing the job hunt until he had his master's degree in hand.
j. Two of the three prestigious universities accepted Austin and offered financial aid. The third one rejected his application.
k. Austin made his decision.
Required:
Classify the events (a) through (k) under the six steps of the model for making tactical decisions described in the text.