Heartily agree with @Rdtsmith’s points, especially the one about knowing all the rules for their particular college, major, department, and classes. Check schedules to make sure they are as balanced as feasible in a credit intensive major, and not top heavy with multiple projects coming due on the same day at the end of the semester.
If professors are offering partial credit for late assignments, be wary of getting into the habit of submitting assignments after their soft deadline except on rare occasions. It is all too easy for lost points to add up, and even if the student learns the material to the point of mastery the grade will not reflect this. It might not matter immediately if the student passes the class and understands the material well enough to take subsequent classes, but later on it will matter for some purposes.
Be very careful about taking an incomplete instead of a W, if it is offered, especially in fall semester when there might not be enough time to make up the work while the material is still fresh.
I would add that if a student had an especially thorough grounding in AP classes and did not move ahead because the college discouraged this, they wanted to concentrate on getting adjusted to a new setting, or because they were not confident, the “hard stuff” might not hit until sometime during sophomore year.
College classes can differ dramatically in terms of work load, even classes that satisfy the same requirement. My kids also mentioned that lots of students take a buffer class (as mentioned in #38 in order to be able to maintain full-time status if they drop a class, and even outside of engineering, most students do not take more than three truly difficult or time-consuming classes at once. This is nothing like high school, where many students are taking a most rigorous schedule of 5 or 6 difficult classes at once. If a class will need to be repeated because of a bad grade, it is best if this can be done over a summer since a repeated enrollment will not count towards the credits needed for full-time status. Some classes are not offered during summer sessions.
Also - if there are IT problems such as getting locked out of websites, your child should handle these immediately. If they are in the habit of procrastinating they might not realize they have been locked out until right before an assignment is due or an exam is imminent, and they won’t have time to get things fixed. One more reason for submitting electronic assignments, in particular, ahead of time, aside from the possibility that they could attempt to submit at the last minute when a server is backed up.
Make sure every electronic assignment goes through, and every paper copy is received on time by the appropriate person.
They should be scrupulous about checking e-mail, especially if they have turned it off for several hours or even a day or two to concentrate on something. It is all too easy for an important e-mail from a professor or the registrar to get lost in a queue. Sometimes parents get permission to access a student’s e-mail in order to make sure crucial e-mails are not missed.
Students should be aware that textbooks can be stolen, and be careful about leaving them untended. This happened to each of mine, in one case the day before an open book exam.