Stepping onto a college campus for the first time is both exhilarating and overwhelming—a world of new opportunities, challenges, and responsibilities awaits. Being a college student is about more than just attending classes and earning good grades; it’s about discovering who you are, building meaningful relationships, and learning how to navigate life’s complexities with independence and resilience.

In this chapter, we’ll explore the essential habits, mindsets, and practical strategies that can help you not only survive but thrive during your college years, setting the stage for personal growth and lifelong success. We will also take a closer look at the key differences between high school and college.

1. Academic Success Skills

• Attend every class: Consistent attendance helps you stay engaged and keeps you from falling behind.

• Active participation: Take notes, ask questions, and engage in discussions to deepen your understanding.

• Effective study habits: Join or form study groups, review notes regularly, and use academic support resources.

• Time management: Use planners or digital calendars to track assignments, deadlines, and exams. Start assignments early and break them into manageable steps.

• Read and understand the syllabus: Treat the syllabus as your roadmap for each course, and refer to it often.

• Seek help early: Visit professors during office hours and use tutoring services when needed.

2. Personal Responsibility and Self-Management

• Show up and be prepared Arrive on time, ready to learn, with all necessary materials.

• Balance prioritiesJuggle academics, work, social life, and self-care by setting boundaries and making school a priority.

• Manage stressDevelop coping strategies, such as exercise, mindfulness, or talking to a counselor, to handle academic and personal pressures.

3. Building Relationships and Community

• Connect with peersForm study groups, participate in student organizations, and attend campus events to build a support network.

• Mentoring and networkingSeek out mentors (faculty, older students, alumni) and attend career panels or networking events.

• Get involvedJoin clubs, volunteer, or participate in campus activities to enrich your college experience and develop new skills.

4. Professional and Career Development

• Resume buildingAttend resume workshops, seek internships, and participate in mock interviews to prepare for your career.

• Explore opportunitiesAttend job fairs, research presentations, and graduate school information sessions to learn about future paths.

• Skill developmentTake advantage of workshops (e.g., software skills, public speaking) to enhance your resume.

5. Self-Reflection and Goal Setting

• Clarify your goalsReflect on your values, motivations, and what you want from your college experience.

• Adapt and persistBe open to change, learn from setbacks, and keep working toward your goals even when things get tough.

6. Practical Tips and Campus Life

• Master campus resourcesLearn about the library, academic support centers, counseling services, and student health resources.

• Stay organizedKeep track of assignments, meetings, and commitments to avoid last-minute stress.

• Take care of yourselfPrioritize sleep, nutrition, and exercise to maintain your well-being and academic performance.

As you navigate the journey of being a college student, remember that success is about more than checking off assignments or acing exams. It’s about embracing new experiences, learning from challenges, and growing into a more independent and self-aware person. Every step—whether it’s managing your time, building relationships, or taking care of yourself—contributes to the foundation you’re laying for your future. Approach these years with curiosity, resilience, and an open mind, and you’ll find that college is not just a place to learn, but a place to become.

“How College is Different from High School”

Avid – “Decades of College Dreams”

¹College differs from high school in many obvious—and not so obvious—respects. College is the first setting where we expect young people to function as adults, not large children. Almost all the rules of the game that students have so carefully mastered over the preceding 13 years of schooling are either discarded or modified radically. The student-teacher relationship changes dramatically, as do expectations for engagement, independent work, motivation, and intellectual development. All this occurs while young people are also grappling with significant independence from their families and with the transition from childhood to adulthood. It is not surprising that moving from high school to college is one of the most difficult transitions that many people experience during their entire lives.

²Because college is genuinely different from high school, college readiness is fundamentally different than high school competence. Detailed analyses of college courses reveal that although a college course may share the same name as a high school course, college instructors pace their courses more rapidly, emphasize different aspects of material taught, and have very different goals for their courses than do high school instructors (Conley, Aspengren, Stout, & Veach 2006). Students fresh out of high school may assume a college course will be very much like a similarly named high school class they have taken only to find that expectations are fundamentally different. College instructors are more likely to emphasize a series of key thinking skills that students typically do not develop extensively in high school. They expect students to make inferences, interpret results, analyze conflicting explanations of phenomena, support arguments with evidence, solve complex problems that have no obvious answers, draw conclusions, offer explanations, conduct research, engage in the exchange of ideas, and generally think deeply about what they are being taught (National Research Council, 2002).

³Research findings describe college courses that require students to read eight to ten books in the same period that a high school class requires only one or two (Standards for Success, 2003). In these college classes, students are expected to write multiple papers in short periods of time. These papers must be well reasoned, well organized, and documented with evidence from credible sources (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2003, 2004, 2006). By contrast, high school students may write one or two research papers, at the most, during high school, and may take weeks or months to do so. Increasingly, college courses in all subject areas require well-developed writing skills, research capabilities, and what have been commonly identified as critical thinking skills.

⁴According to the National Survey of Student Engagement (2006), a vast majority of first-year college students are actively engaged in small groups and are expected to work on complex problems and projects with others inside and outside of class. They are then expected to make presentations and to explain what they have learned. Freshman students are expected to be independent, self-reliant learners who recognize when they are having problems and know when and how to seek help from professors, peers, or other sources.

⁵At the same time, college faculty consistently report that freshman students need to be spending nearly twice as much time as they actually report to prepare for class (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2006). Students generally do not enter college with a work ethic that prepares them for instructor expectations or course requirements. The most successful first-year college students are those who come prepared to work at the levels faculty members expect. Those who do not arrive at college fully prepared are significantly less likely to progress beyond entry-level courses, as witnessed by the high failure rates in these courses and the high dropout rate among freshman students.

⁶Finally, the student-teacher relationship is much different in college than in high school. A common example cited by college faculty is the first-term freshman who is failing a course and approaches the professor near the end of the term to request extra credit in order to be able to pass the course. College instructors are often perplexed by such requests, students are equally baffled by the instructor’s reaction, since their high school teachers were usually amenable to such an arrangement. In other words, the cultural and social expectations about learning and performance that students encounter tend to vastly differ as well.

⁷In short, the nature of expectations in high school and in college are significantly different. Students must be prepared to draw upon a different array of learning strategies and coping skills to be successful in college than those they developed and honed in high school. Current measures of college readiness do not necessarily do a good job of capturing these multifaceted dimensions of readiness.

Copyright ©2007 from Redefining College Readiness by Dr. David Conley.