By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed.
College is a lot different than high school. If you’re already in college, you know this. If you’re currently in high school, trust me when I tell you college is nothing like your high school experience.
Not only are classes more challenging in college, but your schedule, relationships with teachers, and how much you’re expected to independently manage are all drastically different from high school.
In this blog post, I share 12 pieces of college advice no one tells you.
College Advice No One Tells You: 12 Tips for College Students
Truthfully, this list could be 100 tips long, but there’s so much about your college experience that you will have to figure out for yourself.
1. Study with People Smarter than You
Study groups aren’t for everyone, but they can help you learn material deeper than if you were to study alone – as long as you are intentional about who is in your study group.
Yes, it’s more fun to study with your friends. But a solid piece of college advice is to spend your social time with friends and study time with a carefully chosen group of students with similar academic goals.
Studying with a group of people who are focused and intent on learning the material can be more valuable than hours of studying by yourself.
In this blog post, I share my top tips for getting the most out of your group study sessions so you don’t waste a single minute.
One of the reasons studying in groups can be so effective is that not only can you learn from students in your group who understand the material better than you, but you also have the opportunity to teach other people in the group what you confidently know.
Teaching others is an incredible way to solidify your own understanding, as summarizing and paraphrasing material out loud is an active recall study strategy. Link
2. There’s No Reason for All-Nighter Study Sessions
A classic stereotype of the college experience is that you’ll spend most of your nights in the library, studying for hours at a time. Here’s the truth: Pulling epic all-nighter study sessions is completely unnecessary in college.
Unlike a high school schedule, a college schedule allows for studying during the day. Most college students will have giant gaps in their days with no classes. You may even have full days with no classes. If you do, here’s my best advice for how to use your no-class days in college.
You can completely avoid late-night study sessions if you use your time smartly during the day. If you avoid procrastination and manage your time with a calendar, most students will have plenty of time during the day to complete assignments and study for upcoming tests. Doing this will open up your evenings to be spent however you want.
The college advice no one tells you is to take your daytime hours seriously and use them to get your work done. Normalize leaving a class and going directly to the library or a study nook in another building to complete the work that was just assigned. Normalize getting started on assignments on your syllabus even when the teacher hasn’t talked about them yet. This is what taught performing students do, and this is how they do it. Link
3. Skipping Class Will Always Backfire
Most professors don’t care if you skip class. Unlike in high school, you’re not getting reported to the principal’s office and there will be no phone call home.
While this freedom can feel exciting in the first semester of college, top students realize this freedom is a trap.
Do not skip your college classes. College classes are designed to be content-heavy. This means that significant information is often delivered in a lecture format, which you can’t always recover from your friend’s notes or reading what the teacher has posted on the student portal.
If you skip a class in high school, it’s usually pretty simple to get the information you missed, either from the teacher or a friend. But in college, the material is more complex. Missing just one class can disrupt your understanding of an entire unit.
If you do have to skip class for legitimate reasons, these are the steps you should take as soon as possible.
4. Go to Office Hours and Use Your TA
One of the best pieces of college advice no one tells you is to take advantage of professor or teacher’s assistant (TA) office hours.
It’s common for students to learn more from their TAs than from their actual college professors. This can be true for multiple reasons, but usually, it has to do with accessibility. For example, you may have a physics lab once a week, which means you only see your physics professor once a week. But a TA is often available several times a week, and can teach you the material in a more personalized setting.
5. Rent Your Books on Amazon
College textbooks are absurdly expensive. While you can often purchase used textbooks at a discount from your college bookstore, you can find better prices on Amazon. As soon as you know your courses for the next semester, begin your search for discounted textbooks.
Another option is to buy a textbook from a student who just completed the class you’ll be taking. Buying a textbook directly from a student often benefits you both, as they get to keep the cash for themselves (instead of splitting it with a reseller), and you’ll often get the best price.
When you’re done with your textbooks, make some money back by selling them to another student.
6. Use the Writing Center
College writing centers are under-utilized resources. The writing center is available for students who need help with essays and research projects, and it’s at no extra cost to you.
Each college is different, but writing centers are often run by professors and/or advanced-level college students who excel in writing.
Some colleges require appointments, but others allow you to drop into the writing center whenever you need help with a writing assignment. The benefit of college resource centers writing centers is that the people who work there are often familiar with the writing assignments. This means they can jump right into helping you without spending time trying to understand the assignment beforehand.
7. No One Cares Where You Went to High School
College is a fresh start. Nobody on your college campus will know who you were in high school or what your reputation was when you were younger. College is an opportunity to carry on with the parts of your identity that you like and make changes to areas you want to be different.
One piece of college advice no one tells you is that nobody you meet in college really cares about what you were or weren’t in high school, so it’s not worth carrying all that with you into conversations you have when you meet people.
Did you go to a fancy private school? Doesn’t matter. Your new college friends won’t be impressed. It’s best to bond over something else. Did you win an award in high school? That’s amazing, and that probably helped you get into college, but your new college friends won’t find that impressive.
College is a time to start over with humility and let your high school experience remain in high school. That’s not to say that your high school experience didn’t matter (it certainly did!) –but what felt huge and important in high school doesn’t carry much weight in college.
In fact, high school experiences carry so little weight in college that they hardly have a place on your college or early career resume. (link)
8. You Have to Know How to Adult
If you live on a college campus and not at home, you must have some basic adulting skills for your college experience to be smooth.
I alluded to this in tip 3, but you have a lot of freedom in college. This can be both good and bad, depending on how you handle freedom.
Remember, nobody checks up on you in college. No one wakes you up in the morning to go to class. No one reminds you that it’s time to do laundry or that your trash smells. No one reminds you that it’s time to wash your sheets or start your research paper.
While some students find this freedom exciting (no more nagging!), it can lead to other students’ downfall.
Some critical life skills that successful college students have include:
- Knowing how to do laundry
- Basic financial literacy
- Cleaning routine
- Basic food preparation
- How to make appointments
- What to do in the case of emergencies
- Basic transportation knowledge
- Understanding health, wellness and nutrition
- How to manage inventory (ie: how not to run out of deodorant and what to do if you do)
Here are 5 adult skills all students need to be functional adults.
9. Follow Your Syllabus
Do not underestimate the power of your syllabus. A syllabus in college is often much more valuable than a syllabus in high school. A high school teacher can veer from the syllabus whenever they want, but college professors usually follow it to a T.
Here are four essential ways to use your syllabus to reduce stress about your grades. Trust me: When your professor hands out the syllabus on the first day of class, store it front and center, someplace you can access it with one click. You could also print it out and tape it to the inside of your notebook.
Top students use their syllabus to make progress on assignments that haven’t been talked about in class yet. This includes readings. I understand using your syllabus independently, without teacher instruction, is a new way of thinking compared to high school. But then again, college is different from high school, which means it requires different strategies.
10. Apply for Jobs and Internships Way Sooner than You Think
Jobs and internships are exceptionally competitive at the college level. If you want a part-time job during the school year or perhaps an internship over winter or summer break, apply earlier than you think is reasonable.
Applying early for jobs and internships also means you need to begin your research even earlier than that. The best place to start researching job and internship opportunities is through your college career center or student resource center.
Colleges have affiliations with other institutions and businesses, but these affiliations bear no weight if other students have already beaten you to the application process.
If you’ve been thinking about internships And are curious to learn more, these are the three most valuable skills you will need to succeed at a student internship. Link
11. Work When No One’s Looking
You will have a better school experience in all areas if you do the work when no one‘s looking.
In high school, it’s easy to get away with doing the bare minimum. No one really cares if you do what’s asked of you and nothing else.
College does not work this way.
I’ve mentioned a few times already in this post that nobody is checking up on you. Your professors are not reminding you to work on your essay. Instead, they’ll mention it in class, expect you to look at your syllabus, and the rest is up to you. Top students make progress on things when nobody is looking.
If you think this isn’t true, you’re wrong. Top performers don’t tell you that they’re working behind the scenes. Top performers don’t advertise that they’re plugging away at future assignments. But this is what they’re doing. And this is how they’re doing it.
12. Go to Everything
College is one of the few times in your life when you’ll have access to free activities and opportunities. It’s my strong advice to take advantage of as many of these as possible.
Is your school offering a free seminar on a topic you don’t know anything about? Go. When else would you ever learn about that?
Is your school arranging bus transportation to a nearby city for a discounted price? Get on the bus.
Is there a lecture in the library from an author doing a book tour? Get there.
Again, college is one of the few times in your life when you will have access to opportunities at little to no cost or effort to you.
Although I played college field hockey, studied abroad, and even signed up for a dog sledding trip across the Maine-Canada tundra during winter break, I still wish I had taken advantage of more opportunities. Learn from me.
Life happens pretty quickly after college. You’ll get a job, maybe adopt a pet, maybe meet somebody… All of these are wonderful. But the reality is, these are all responsibilities that come with a bit of an anchor.
Additionally, attending lectures and trips after college will be at your own expense, which can be a limiting factor if you’re living on a budget.
Final Notes about College Advice No One Tells You
College is an incredible experience that’s a privilege. It can be challenging at times and you may feel overwhelmed with all the freedom and choices at your fingertips. At the top of this blog post, I said this list could be 100 items long, and while that’s true, everybody’s list would look different.
Many of your greatest college experiences will hit you by surprise. Many of your greatest college moments will come out of nowhere and no amount of preparation or college advice blogs will prepare you for them. My suggestion – in those moments – is to ride the wave with your eyes wide open.