General advice for college freshmen?
 

I'll be attending a large state school. I'm moving in soon and I am very nervous! Does anyone have advice regarding academics, social life, time management, or anything else?

My best advice -
You will be moving from high school where you had every moment of every day planned and mom and/or dad to help if you slipped up. You will have more freedom and more responsibility.

Treat class like a 40 hour a week job. Go to class religiously. Study in between class an you will have time on weekends and evenings for fun.
Limit lunch (and hanging out at lunch) to one hour.
For every one hour of lecture class - you need to study for three, even if it is just recopying your notes.
If you didnt have to work very hard in high school take a short course or read a book on how to take notes (biggest shortfall I see in freshmen right now)
Dont go home every weekend - thats some of the best time for meeting people and getting involved on campus. (Make an excuse that you want to go to all the football games.)

Finally - talk to your professors. They dont bite. You might need ti ask them for help if you get sick or behind or for a rec letter later
(Plus it doesnt hurt if they have a good image of you and your sisters)

If I left anything out - pm me

Don't buy your books until after the first day of class - PLEASE! You probably won't need them. And order them online from a site like Chegg, NOT your college bookstore! :)

Find a way to study abroad.

For Math or Science Classes or your major you WILL need them and you ought to have them. If you are going to order books online - you need to order them ahead of time so you aren't behind already the first week of class.

Check to be sure if they are using online homework. If they are using an online homework system, it costs more to buy online and a used book than to buy a used book. BUT some books are online now and you can get the e-book and online homework for half the price of a new book and the online homework.

To save your back, try seeing if some of your books are available as ebooks. They can often be cheaper than the printed ones.

This may be something you've already heard or thought of, but make sure to have all the things you have in your medicine cabinet at home. Pain relievers, bandages, pepto bismol, cough drops/cough syrup, and a thermometer. That first time you get sick living on your own is a real wake up call. At least having some supplies handy can make you more comfortable. Also, a box or two of jello isn't bad to keep on hand. The cafeteria is the last place you feel like being if you get stomach flu.

As a college sophomore now looking back on freshmen year this is my advice (I also attend a very large school!):

Meeting people in the first month: try to meet and be more social than usual your first month at school. People are extremely open to meeting others and talking to strangers. After half way through the 1st semester, people are going to 'group' off. It doesn't mean they won't talk to anyone else; it just means they aren't as open to making new friends right off the bat with you.
Classes/studying: Go to class. I'm paying well over $15,000 as an in-state student JUST for tuition. If you're taking 18 credit hours and each class is 3 credit hours, that is paying $2500 per class. Don't get cocky about your first round of midterms. I thought I knew how to study in high school but boy was I wrong. If you do poorly on your first round of midterms, figure out why and adjust. Try to block off time in your schedule for studying. Not like socializing with your friends studying but actual focused studying. You'll get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time and have MORE free time than if you socialized while studied.
Books: If you want to save money on your textbooks and hate ebooks like me, find out what books you need before classes start. If they aren't listed in your student account, email your professors and ask. Search by the IBN number on google (abebooks.com is a good place!) to find a used/cheaper textbook. Even if you end up not needing the textbook, I guarantee you will pay less than if you had bought it from your campus bookstore. You can easily resell it for more money (spending money!) if you find a facebook group that has a lot of students in it.

As someone who graduated with a degree in English, I can wholeheartedly say that I needed my textbooks. To the OP, I'd take this piece of advice with a grain of salt. If you can rent your books or find other more economical ways of getting them (getting them online or from the library), then more power to you. However, I would never suggest to anyone that he or she not have the materials that the professors recommend students to have.

I'm trying to remember a course in my prerequisite work that I took for which they were not necessary, and I just can't.

If your book list is long for a particular class, I'd wait. I had plenty of classes where the prof had you purchase a whole book so that you could read 1 chapter. Photocopying @ $.10/page times 50 pages is $5.00, not $50 or $100. And you can also check a lot of those books out from the library. So I'd go to class and find out how much reading you actually have to do before you make the purchase. If it's a math or science class, yeah, duh, buy the book, but there are a lot of ways to get reading done that doesn't require buying a whole hard copy book. And Shakespeare, for instance, is Shakespeare, regardless of what form it comes in. And you don't, regardless how awesome, need a Shakespeare anthology. In 10 years when you want to re-read the Tempest, you can buy it then. But while in college, there's a lot of ways to get by without the investment.

My advice is join study groups. It will help you make friends outside your immediate circle (dorm floor and/or new sorority) AND give you a lot of insight into the classwork. I didn't do this until my junior year or so, but actually needed it as a freshman.

This is free advice, right from a professor. It makes me sound grumpy, but these are the things I drilled into my daughter before she went to college last year:

1. Get the books. Have them ready. Make a good first impression. Professors don't want to hear a whiney "they're taking too long to get here...I can't do the first assignment!" or worse "I ordered a cheap copy on line and it's the wrong edition!" I've heard these, and I don't have sympathy. Buy used at the college bookstore, and have them ready. E-books are good, too, but they haven't hit the textbook market as widely. Selling real textbooks is too lucrative.

2. Go to class. All the time. We can tell when you're skipping and when you're legitimately absent. What I really find troubling is when people give me a vague "death in the family" or "serious illness in the family" or "other sensitive medical issue" excuse with no details. No professor is going to be rude and ask you to prove this. Naughty students know this, and they think they've gotten away with it. No...they've just raised suspicions. When it's real, students readily share the details up front in the first contact.

3. Defying all odds, printers have a strange habit of malfunctioning right when a paper is due! E-mail a copy as proof, if this really happens to you. Or, use the computer lab printer. If you don't, I'm suspicious that it's not done.

4. Talk to your parents. Be honest. Talk to your professors. If you need help, let them know. Don't wait. Lots of freshmen have trouble adjusting, and it can come at any time. For some people, it's right away. For others, it happens later. College counseling centers are busy places. Get tutoring help if you need it.

5. Set strict limits on how much time you can spend on your phone, Facebook, etc. These are time vacuums. Don't ever text in class. We can tell. Don't be off-task on your lap top. We can tell. If you're going to use a lap top in class, sit in a spot where classmates can see your lap top (the texters and surfers sit in the back row, and along the walls).

Do:
Smile. Be engaged in class. Sit where you can easily make eye contact with the professor. Manage your time. Plan ahead with your work load. Put business before pleasure. If you join a sorority, make friends with a nice older sister who can give you some guidance and advice. Go to bed at a reasonable hour and take care of yourself.

Admittedly, the scenarios where I waited to buy the books was not my freshman classes. As a freshman, do as Sciencewoman says and buy the books. Later on you can figure out when teachers are oblivious to what books cost and react accordingly.

And yes, GO TO CLASS. I was able to survive while skipping a lot as a freshman, but getting by is no way to go through college and I spent the rest of college trying to get my GPA out of the tank. And on that note, unless you absolutely positively have to, don't schedule classes early. For me, a good first class was 10:30. For others it might have been 9:30 or even 8:30, but be realistic about when you're really going to be able to get up, have breakfast and be at class on time, and as a freshman, I'd err later.

Yes, but when you're given page and line number for a specific reference to analyze in class, if you don't have the same edition, you may have missed the point the professor made regarding that reference by the time you find the text in your editions, and those points and interpretations are the stuff they expect you to be able to discuss in your exam.

Don't be too hard on yourself! Everyone has hard days or weeks or even a rough first semester. Do not decide to transfer based on a hard transition. There are many real reasons to change schools, but never make that decision in the midst of one of the biggest transitions of your life. Give everything time.

I really want to echo what others have said regarding your professors. I've been teaching in higher ed. for 12 years. Talk to your professors. If you are struggling with something or unclear about instructions, ask. If you really mess up and are feeling desperate, DO NOT DISAPPEAR!!! Go to your instructor and ask for support. I've had to fail way too many students who produced high quality work but completely bailed on the course because they got scared.

Don't plagiarize! No matter how close the deadline is or how freaked out you might be about the criteria, asking for help is 100 times better than cheating.

Some high school relationships will struggle to make it through this transition year. Even bffs. Change is inevitable.

The book thing is tough. Hypo's school does things very strangely, IMO. The first two weeks of class are the shopping period. Students go to lots of classes to decide which ones they want to have. If you bought all the books ahead of time, you'd have books for several classes that you don't actually have. Additionally, she has found out at the first class of the period that there are too many students registered and they are doing a lottery to see who gets to stay in the class. Last year, she had a lottery for her psych lab and got in. Then they had a lottery for her psych lecture and she didn't get in. Then they added a section for all the kids who didn't get in. The two sections used different textbooks. She got burned and spent a ton of extra money because she bought that book when she got into the lab. I think it seems like a really messy system, but the students really like it, for the most part.

My advice is: There will be times in your first year when you feel really lonely, especially if you are used to an environment where you knew everybody (smaller town/high school). You may not make instant friends, but those friends you've left behind weren't instant either. Those friendships were the result of years of cultivation. Regardless, you will make friends.

It's ok to be scared. It's a huge life change and everybody is feeling scared, even if they don't admit it or act like it is no big deal.

Here is my advice. I narrowed it down to 10 big ones, I could go on and on.

1. On the topic of books since everyone seems to be talking about them. Get your math and science books as soon as you know what books to get. Your gen ed books or english/history classes it is tougher to tell whether you will actually need them. I've had plenty of classes where I didn't even open the book. Most professors will tell you flat out if you need it the first day of classes. So I'd wait to get those books, or if you want to be on the ball, ask upperclassmen whether they used the book. Sites like Half.com and Chegg are great to for getting your books just make sure you get the right edition.

2. Schedule your time. This helped my a lot because I procrastinate. If you schedule everything you do during the day it really helps figure out your study schedule, and when you can spend time with friends. Even schedule things like showering, working out and brushing your teeth because as much as you think they are quick things they add up and in college every minute in a tight schedule is important.

3. Don't spend money on things you don't need! My freshman year I spent over 300 dollars in one semester on coffee because there was a Starbucks on the same block as my dorm. Don't do it. Going out to dinner, going shopping, the late night fast food/pizza, Starbucks, etc. should be treats, not a regular occasion or else your money will go out the door quicker than you make it.

4. Keep track of your bank account. This is for multiple reasons. Overdraft fees as insanely costly, and can be avoided easily. Also, identity thieves prey on college kids because we're naive and new to managing our own money (or so I've been told)

5. STUDY! its so easy to get distracted with everything else going on but sometimes you need to just stay in and study. You're there to learn after all.

6. Going along with studying, Don't focus solely on your hard classes. Its easy to let your grades slip in the "easy A" classes if you become too worried about your hard classes and don't put in the work for the easy classes.

7. Experience everything! I think this one might be the most important one. You will never have an opportunity to try so many new things as you do in college. Go to parties, go to the "lame" events that sga puts on, most of them are fun with the right people, study abroad. My school has an international night where foreign students make food from their countries, I learned all about new foods and it was a great experience.

8. Get involved. Whether it is greek life, sga, honor societies, a sports team. Do something, college can get really boring if you are sitting in your dorm while all your friends are on campus with their respective organizations.

9. Don't expect to stay best friends with the first people you meet, or marry the first guy you date. Especially at a big school, you will be around a ton of new people and it can take a while to sort through those people to find your people. Your first semester you will be friends with just about anyone you meet because you don't know anyone, as you get to know the school and the people around you it will become easier to make friends who are truly the people you want to surround yourself with.

10. Your roommate does not have to be your best friend. They sometimes can be though. A roommate just has to be someone who has the same ideas on how to live. (i.e. cleanliness, study habits, bed times, rules about guests) When choosing a roommate in future years make sure to think about these things and don't just pick your best friend. Living with your best friend can actually harm the friendship. And don't be disappointed if you meet this years roommate and you don't have all the same interests, you'll make other friends

Thats messed up. (The lottery for classes) They might be pinching pennies on putting together their class schedules? I would have thought a school like that wouldnt have those problems?

There is a new law out that says to help students plan their college budgets we have to tell them which books they will need ahead of time so that you can buy early or get an ebook and save money

Ummmmm....Seriously. This is GREAT advice for ANYONE going to college (not just freshmen). I am starting a program in the fall and the statement about where to sit in class with a laptop is really helpful because I'm not the one to play online. I legitimately take notes. As far as the dying family member--I agree with that one 100x over. I hate to say it but, certain family members "passed away" a few times throughout certain periods of school when I wasn't taking my studies too seriously. Also, I would add GET A USB thumb drive to save stuff. I always emailed my stuff to me so, that was really sound advice too but, I also always had it backed up on a thumb drive. I have papers on my thumb drive from undergrad. It has been really helpful. Thanks for the advice, Sciencewoman.

I've already posted my fall syllabi and activated my course sites, and the university book store has had our books listed by section for a long time now. We have to submit our book orders months in advance. Students can see the reading assignments on the syllabus. In this case, there really isn't an excuse for anyone who's registered ahead of time to be book-less. Our bookstore also has a full price return policy if students drop a class by the drop deadline. All-in-all, in this case, buying at the campus bookstore tends to be better. My daughter has rented quite a few books this year at her campus bookstore...that's also been a money saver.

Go to class. Students can pull at least a C just by going to class. You have to be EXCEPTIONAL to make great grades while skipping. When you don't have your parents there to make you go, you can make lots of excuses not to be in class, but school should be your top priority. Go to class!

Yeah, and they file a tentative program plan in spring but can change it all summer and nothing is set in stone until after the shopping period. I think its weird. The kids like being able to get the syllabus, sit in a lecture or two and then decide which classes to keep. It seems chaotic to me.

I have been shocked that Ole Miss professors assign homework/prep reading for the first day of class. You cannot wait to purchase your books unless you are certain that you are dropping the class that first week.

Not buying a text book = @$200
Taking a class over again? @$2500+

For her spring term class, my daughter had about 100 pages of reading to do ahead of time from two different books, and a paper due on the first day of class!

My advice: If you're struggling in your classes, don't just talk to your professors, but also considering talking to your advisor.

I didn't know (along with others here, and many students who enter college) that you could drop classes. If I had known, my GPA wouldn't have been so awful after my first semester. And it wasn't until we had someone from the school's Career Development Center speak to one of my freshman classes during my second semester, that I realized that Engineering might not be the best option for me. A week after that person came to our class, I dropped out of Physics in the middle of a test (literally, after struggling for 10 minutes, I handed the test in to the professor and essentially said, "I won't be back"), and I went to the Career Development Center to see what my options were. I took interest tests and talked with my advisor to map out a plan for my new major.

There are so many resources available to you in college, and many aren't advertised on Day 1. If you're struggling, talk to your advisor about your options. And be honest with yourself! Don't feel pressured to stay in a class/major that you don't want to be in. This is the rest of your life. You want to be in the right place.

It is hard to believe it has been 10 years since my daughter and I went on the college tour trip. At that time she informed me she was not going to go through recruitment. Reminded me of it over and over. The school she chose had a KD chapter. Oh how I wanted her to go through recruitment. I KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT on that one. I did tell her and this is the advise I give all those going off to college/university:

1. I don't care if you go through recruitment or not, but you have to join something and be active. Do not hide away in your dorm room by yourself

2. This is a time to explore subjects you may or may not have thought about in the past that are not part of your major-- take fun classes! You will probably never had the opportunity to take "Underwater Basket Weaving" again.

3. In my daughter's case she entered school with 22 units and the school paid her out-of-state tuition. I told her not to graduate early but use the 22 units she was ahead to take those fun classes I mentioned above.

4. Have fun but remember, the main purpose of attending school is to get an education!

DaffyKD

1. Guard your reputation. A college campus (no matter the size -2200-60K) is a lot smaller than you may think. Greek Life makes it even smaller and odds are, someone always knows/has a connection to someone else you know--from home or someone you just met at your first college party.

2. Your entire life does not need to be on social media. What you post now can affect that awesome job prospect in 4 years. NOTHING leaves the Internet (simply deleting something doesn't cut it and privacy settings are a joke for the most part). Be smart about what you put out there! Your social media should reflect and build on your personal brand.

3. GET INVOLVED! Greek or not, get involved in something! Every major just about has their own group. Join it. Every religion/denomination usually has a group--if this applies to you, join one. If religion isn't your thing, agnostics and atheists typically have a group too. Just about every political spectrum tends to be represented on a college campus. If you like politics, find your group! Like playing sports but not well enough to be on your school's team? Many sports have their own clubs or intramural teams. Find one you like and join it.

There's lots of great advice here! Thanks to everyone who responded.

This is excellent advice that too many people my age don't listen to it. I myself didn't really understand how important discretion is when it comes to social media- until my friend got fired because of a Tweet that someone else posted!