How to not get destroyed by first semester and Econ 001 as a freshman

Any current Penn students willing to shed some light on how to transition from high school into Penn level work? In other words, how to not get absolutely destroyed by midterms during freshman year (study habits, inside info, how to handle college life, etc.)?

@BokysEdits Econ 001 isn’t as hard as some people might think. It is a pretty large class in a 200+ students, so the difference in the level of prior knowledge for the students in the class is pretty large as well. If you can try to take AP Micro and Macro before coming to Penn so you can be more prepared for Econ 001 and Econ 002. If that is not possible, you need to spend a lot more time studying for Econ 001 as it covers a lot of materials over a short period of time especially for the first couples of weeks as the professors expect students to know some of the material already (for example, PPF, Supply and Demand Curves, Market Equilibriums, etc.) Let me know if you have any other questions or if you want me to elaborate more on anything.

Agree with @Angelababy30, Econ 001/002 isn’t that bad. It’s really a matter of either A) coming in with AP Micro/Macro knowledge (you can even self study a lot of this beforehand) or B) being diligent about preparing through problem sets or other hw. Check out Khan Academy for a lot of the basics / topics like PPF, equilibriums, different macro curves.

You can get out of Econ 001 entirely if you get 5s on your AP exams. But really (and I say this looking in from the outside as a Penn parent), I don’t think the academics at Penn, however challenging, are really the barrier to “survival.” It seems more that there are an immense amount of activities - school-related and social, and mostly competitive - and immense pressure to be involved in many of them. Set limits on your involvement, get enough sleep, and don’t get sucked into the excess partying, and you’ll do fine. Good luck!

@twinsmama Thanks! I will try not to party too much!!