<p>Here’s a question: What about med school?</p>
<p>I think this thread is about freshman year as an undergrad.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you get sick, go see health services! They’re going to take one look at you, tell you that you’re sick, and send you along to go back to bed, but if the need arises where you need to get something dropped, you can. Now, I’m not saying that you should abuse this, but I know many people thought they were superhuman (myself included) and kept doing what they usually do rather than stopping and resting. There are a lot of perks given to freshman because they’re new to the whole system, so take advantage of them if you need them. Oh, and you should probably go to health services even if the course issue doesn’t come into play just in case that cold really is something more malicious.</p></li>
<li><p>You know those pretty flowers and tress in the brochures that aren’t native to the area around the campus? Yeah. Don’t be surprised if you suddenly have allergies.</p></li>
<li><p>Don’t overdo it your first semester. I could easily have handled more my first semester, but I enjoyed being able to go out and meet people without having to worry about falling behind so early in my college career. </p></li>
<li><p>Befriend a professor other than your advisor…they can be sources of invaluable advice. My advisor actually made me do this and it helped me out so much when crap started to happen somewhere around mid-November and I had to seek a medical drop, scale back on extracurricular activities, get a room change, etc.</p></li>
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<p>I mean being a pre-med program and then trying to test into med school. any differences to be aware of?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>(?) Wash your hands more than you usually would. Get a flu shot if you can. Generally try and stay healthy - trust me, being sick in college can be miserable, but there’s a lot you can do to avoid it.</p></li>
<li><p>Some of the most helpful advice I’ve received: try and have one professor every quarter who’d you feel comfortable asking for a recommendation. Even if it’s awkward, speak up in class. You don’t have to suck up or anything, just make sure they know who you are.</p></li>
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<p>EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY important. Especially if you DON’T get much or any financial aid.</p>
<p>
THIS NEEDS TO BE UNDERSTOOD BY ALL</p>
<p>The absolutely WORST mistake you can make in a college is thinking of it as an emotional decision. Every dollar you spend is a dollar you can’t get back. The cost of college gets realized very quickly. </p>
<p>Make a smart investment. College is an investment, you go to get a degree because the average college graduate makes much more than the average high school graduate. Don’t make an investment because of the “feel”. Make it because it’s the right decision. </p>
<p>I just can’t understand why I see so many people wanting to put themselves in 6 figure debt. Debt is not a good thing.</p>
<p>As a parent paying OOS state school tuition/board nearly equal to private tuition, I was shocked to learn that access to certain courses were restricted by year due to “state funding” issues. Indeed, some majors don’t have enough professors or sections because the school is not sure if the major is a temporary “blip” (International Relations) or a more permanent area of growth (smile), as we learned at orientation. Parents/students thinking about OOS admissions to selective state schools should remember that even great state schools are state schools with state school funding issues. However, in the weather department, S1 made a good choice. While we are still waiting for more snow, he is playing golf. The long, cold, dreary winters of NE are indeed long, cold and dreary winters.</p>
<p>Oh, meant to mention that the OP gave great advice - I will print out for S2.</p>
<p>Also, I am concerned that S2 did not apply to any state schools. Seeing the economy all over the place reminds me of all the positive things about my alma mater, the state university…</p>
<p>Not only should you consider the cost of tuition and housing, keep in mind the cost of traveling back home during vacations and at the end of the school year. I know a lot of students originally reject the idea of going to a college close to home, but even a college an hour away doesn’t mean that you’ll be going home THAT often.</p>
<p>I currently have to fly back home during vacations, and it is a LOT more expensive than I thought it would be. If you are not on top of scheduling your plane flights, you may be looking at plane tickets several hundred dollars more than you expect. For instance, I have to book my Thanksgiving and Christmas plane tickets in July right after I finish enrolling for my Fall classes. I once waited too long (August) and was looking at extremely expensive prices. Not to mention, the shuttle from school to the airport for me is $18 one-way ($36 roundtrip) and the whole deal takes pretty much one entire day to make it from campus to the airport through security check-in to waiting for your flight to finally making it back home.</p>
<p>Also, you should think about whether or not you want the convenience of being able to come home randomly for a weekend. I love where I go to college, but I do wish I had the choice of coming home for special occasions (e.g. a friend is back in town or a relative’s birthday). Also, it makes it easier in case you forgot something back at home or just wanted to get something (like your car or some nicer formal clothes) instead of having to resort to purchasing it near school or just doing without it.</p>
<p>ALSO, remember that you have to move all your stuff to and from school at the beginning and end of the year!!! I cannot tell you how stressful it is to attempt to stuff a year’s worth of YOUR LIFE into the backseat/trunk of your car! My sister has to drive to my school every year and pick me up and then proceed to drive eight hours back home in a squished car. If you’re living in the dorms, they kick you out the last day of finals (and luck will have it be that YOU will probably be stuck with the last final time) which means you will have only a few hours to pack and leave (most people want to devote finals week to studying instead of packing). All I am saying is that I REALLY wished I had thought about living closer to home, especially since it allows you to potentially take several trips to and from home (or have more than one car from your family take the trip up) instead of hoping that everything that you’ve accumulated over one year will fit into one tiny car.</p>
<p>For those students who “want to get away from home”, remember that just because home is right around the corner doesn’t mean that you actually have to go back that often! It’s a choice on how often you go home and as long as you choose a college that you feel is different enough from home in a good way, you might find that actually HAVING that choice to go home once in awhile will only be an extra plus and money saver!</p>
<p>Isn’t there a storage place for students who want to keep their stuff there?</p>
<p>Also, how many students actually stay at the university during Thanksgiving and Christmas?</p>
<p>You can arrange for storage, but its inconvenient because if you are living in the dorms during the school year, the things that you have brought are things that you usually use year round and would like to continue using during the summer. (Something like furniture would make sense for storage, but because dorms already provide the furniture, you probably wouldn’t have purchased those things for your room). There may be a few items that you could potentially store in storage, but often times you will find that the hassle of getting the items to and back from storage and paying for it may not be worth it if you only have a few items. There also may not simply be enough time to carefully sort out what you want in storage and arrange for it all to make it there (remember, this will probably occur during Finals week in June). I’m sure there are some students who live across the country that probably do end up using storage, but most people I know at my school just end up going through great lengths to truck everything home. I am DEFINITELY not saying that should make or break your decision to go to a college farther away from home (that should be your one of your last reasons to not go! lol), but if it comes down to a choice between two fantastic schools that you could see yourself having a great time at both, then the convenience of living closer to home may be something to strongly consider.</p>
<p>Most students go home during Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think most university dorms and the dining halls actually shut down during Winter Break (Christmas) for the entire break, though I’m sure many universities have some sort of way to allow a stay-over during that time. But I would say about 85% of the students go home for Thanksgiving and 98% of the students go home for Winter Break.</p>
<p>Most schools don’t allow students to stay at the school over Thanksgiving and ESPECIALLY Winter Break. The option of staying I’ve noticed is primarily only avaliable to international students.</p>
<p>thanx… you have made my selection alot easier</p>
<p>Quote:</p>
<p>“I currently have to fly back home during vacations, and it is a LOT more expensive than I thought it would be. If you are not on top of scheduling your plane flights, you may be looking at plane tickets several hundred dollars more than you expect.”</p>
<p>I cannot stress this enough. I currently live about 700 miles from home, which is entirely too far a drive. Plane tickets are more expensive than i thought, especially considering the amount of holidays and occasions you may want to go home for. You should also factor in the travel time. I recently spent about 24 hours in an airport trying to get home for spring break. With airplanes, you are always subject to their scheduling and weather concerns. You are at their mercy. Consider this before you decide to go outside of driving distance. There may be some occasions you would like to go home for, that you cannot make. This weekend is Easter, and i cannot go home because I was home for Spring Break last week. It is these little things to consider when going more than two or three hours from home. Not to scare you away from it, or anything.</p>
<p>“Isn’t there a storage place for students who want to keep their stuff there?”</p>
<p>Most schools don’t have this. Students typically buy storage space off campus.</p>
<p>“Also, how many students actually stay at the university during Thanksgiving and Christmas?”</p>
<p>Many campuses completely shut down during Christmas vacations and even spring break. Even international students may have to find other places to stay.</p>
<p>Both of these situations are important when considering colleges far from home. </p>
<p>I am surprised that so many students on CC, including low income and middle class students, are considering colleges thousands of miles from home. Yes, it sounds enticing and glamorous to be going to college far away. However, doing so greatly adds to one’s costs, and will prevent your doing things that many students enjoy doing.</p>
<p>Typically financial aid covers – at most – a trip home for Christmas and the end of the year. However, if you’re not an easy drive from home, your parents may not be able to take you to college (which makes it lots more difficult to get your stuff there) and participate in family weekends or other events, and you may be desperately looking for some place to stay over Thanksgiving and spring break. </p>
<p>If your campus is like many which virtually clear out for three-day weekends such as Veteran’s Day, you also may regret then not being in a place that is closer to home. Due to the amount of money you’re having to spend on a wardrobe to meet the needs of a new climate, travel to and from your college, you also may not be able to afford to visit nearby cities or recreation areas as many students do over three-day weekends.</p>
<p>Even going to school that’s “driving distance” may still hurt your finances and options when it comes to going home, seeing family, etc. Many parents don’t have the vacation time to be able to take off a couple of days to get their kids to and from college or to attend an event at their kid’s college. A school that’s “just” 6 hours away would require a parent to take a day off to visit, etc.</p>
<p>With the cost of gas, such trips also are becoming extremely expensive even if a student has their own car.</p>
<p>I went to college about a 3-hour drive from home, moving from Upstate N.Y. to Boston. Although that may seem like a short distance, it was a big distance in terms of how my hometown differed from Boston. I learned a lot by having to adapt to that new environment. Even with that relatively short distance, I still had to pinch pennies to get home for some 3-day weekends. I tended to take Grayhound, not fly.</p>
<p>I also agree with those who point out how much weather can affect one’s travel options. This is an important consideration for plane as well as car travel. If you’ll have to fly through or to the snow belt, be prepared for missing flights and having delays due to blizzards, etc. This typically won’t cause much problems for you if you are only going a couple of hundred miles, but could result in some overnights in airports if you’re going a longer distance. Not a great way to spend part of a 3-day weekend or a trip home for some special family celebration.</p>
<p>I second the money issue. Even if your parents are relatively well off and you receive no financial aid, the financial burden is always there and rearing its ugly little head.
Try to be careful of money in lines of:
- eating out. My uni is in a wealthy town, and inevitably we eat out to celebrate the end of finals, for (insert name)'s birthday (which happens many times), for whatever other reason. $20 a meal sucks the money right out of the bank.
- Fees for intramurals, sports, clubs, etc.
- Travel to and from cities, plays, concerts, home, to visit friends
- The plays, concerts, student-events themselves. Even at $8-10 a piece, you go to more than 10 of those a year I would imagine, and don’t really want to miss them.</p>
<p>Make a more conservative estimate of how much money you will need! Even if you’re like, oh I just won’t go out, in the beginning, it’s a vastly different decision when all your friends are leaving and you’re there.
I saved up $3000 to spend for myself from working this summer, and am very close to being out. I don’t know how I’m going to replenish that this summer since I am not getting paid as much.</p>
<p>I also second the watch what you bring to college issue. You will never need as much as you bring initially, try to take some back during any breaks. I haven’t touched 1/4 of the things I brought. It’s still kinda costly to store over the break, and my school does it per-box.</p>
<p>If you’re going to a city for the “opportunities beyond campus,” please be aware that with the increased opportunities, there’s increased competition. I go to NYU and have met many people who want to find the big i-banking internship with only volunteering-at-the-shelter experience. Be prepared to search independently for these so-called opportunities, knowing that you might have to settle for less than what you imagined.</p>
<p>Also be aware that you can find plenty of opportunities in cities that aren’t New York, D.C., etc. I was sure I would have to go to Washington to benefit from good political opportunities, but it turns out Columbus offers all that, too - on a different scale, sure, but its internship opportunities with state representatives/the governor/other political agencies are still plentiful. I’d imagine the same is true of any other state capitol of somewhat large city.</p>