<p>
</p>
<p>What do you mean by this?</p>
<p>I have some advices as well:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Enjoy your time in college because college only happens once.</p></li>
<li><p>Take advantage of all the opportunities your college offers. If there’s a summer internship, research program, or study abroad program definitely consider doing it. It looks good on your resume and most the time it will be fun.</p></li>
<li><p>Take classes that interest you. Don’t set your mind on one major because it might not be the one for you. Explore your options and when you find some subject you enjoy then pursue it.</p></li>
<li><p>Demonstrate school spirit. Attend some of the sporting events especially for those school that do not have a strong backing in the athletics. </p></li>
<li><p>Volunteer. Volunteering is always a very rewarding thing to do. Try to find time to help the community.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>
I would rephrase those comments: find out who to trust about what and which perspective your advisers are coming from. For example, my freshman academic adviser (who was assigned to me alphabetically) knows about the general college resources. I go to her when I want to find out who to talk to about X. However, I rarely ask her specific questions because her knowledge of campus policies seems to be very outdated. I also ignored her advice about my first-semester schedule because it was very clear to me that she is one of those advisers who prefer to err on the side of caution, which does not work well for the better students. </p>
<p>My major adviser on the other hand tends to advise students to take classes on the challenging side, and blames the students’ work ethics when things go wrong. He has no problem letting freshmen into Abstract Algebra, for example. (Great for me, less great for some other students.) He is also very frank with advice about other classes. I can tell him that I like a certain teaching style, and he will tell me which professors to seek out and even which professors to avoid (that is rare!) </p>
<p>I use ratemyprofessor when I am looking for easy electives to fill my schedule, but I prefer to talk to actual people about classes and professors whenever I can. I might like a class for the very same reason that another student disliked it. It might be hard though to tell from a one-sentence comment why a particular poster liked or disliked said professor.</p>
<p>I agree with essentially all of chuy’s advice.</p>
<p>Yeah for ratemyprofessors you’ll find a lot of mixed reviews. But the amazing thing about college is that if you go to the class and discover that you don’t like the class/teacher, you can always change it! For my English lit class, I wasn’t too found of the teacher so I switched out and was much happier. </p>
<p>I COMPLETELY agree with chuy’s advice 
</p>
<p>oh also as some people mentioned on here, look up study hacks (read it religiously before college) and read his books. good stuff.</p>
<p>I agree with “dchow08”
Nice Advice</p>
<p>I think that probably the most important advice I have is this:</p>
<p>In high school, you probably had restrictions on what freedoms you had. You had to go to certain classes to graduate, you got stuck with awful teachers you couldn’t choose from, you had to get good grades to get into a top college, and your parents pressured you to go to sleep by a certain time, dress a certain way, whatever. These are just a few examples. And that’s the way it’s been probably for a lot of your life.</p>
<p>When you’re in college, though, you have almost complete freedom. I can’t speak for every college, so let me speak for Swarthmore. At Swarthmore, the atmosphere is very tolerant. You can drink underage and nobody will care. You can skip class. You can stay up however late you want. You can dress however you want, and nobody’s going to care, and no one’s going to pressure you. It’s one of the few times (if not the only time) when you’re going to have as much freedom. After college, you’re probably going to be pressured to get a job, and work from 9-5. You have 4 years, and in my experience, the first year went by really quickly. </p>
<p>So make the most out of it! Make sure you study hard, but make sure that you join some campus organization, and get really involved in it. Strive to be a very active participant, not just a member. By getting involved in some group, be it a school newspaper, a cultural group, or a volunteer club, or any thing that suits you, you’ll make a support group and meet more friends. Join something that you truly want to join. You have the freedom to do it. </p>
<p>Make sure you work hard, but don’t just leave class, go to the library, study, eat dinner, and then study some more, go to bed, and repeat. You’ll get bored so fast. Make meeting lots of interesting people and having fun a priority. It’s way, way more important to have an awesome time in college than it is to get an A in a class. Take advantage of all the freedom you have, because it’ll be gone before you know it.</p>
<p>That’s probably the single most important piece of advice I could give.</p>