College Bound? 4 Tips to Be Successful during Your Freshman Year

Your freshman year in college can be both challenging and liberating. You may love the feeling of being independent and making your own decisions as a young adult. However, it can also be stressful or even frightening to know that you are fully responsible for all aspects of your life going forward. You understandably want to get your college experience off on the right foot, but many factors can stand in your way. These helpful tips for freshmen can guide you through the first year of college.

Choose the Right School

Each college or university such as Stevens Henager college that you may be thinking about enrolling in can provide you with a different educational experience and different life experiences. For example, some schools have a much smaller average class size, and they may mostly be taught by a professor rather than a teaching assistant.

Other schools may have classes with several hundred students in them, and you may feel as though the professor is relatively inaccessible to you. In addition, on-campus resources, schedule options, internship or research opportunities, extracurricular activities and more can all play a role in your overall educational experience as well as in how successful you are in school.

Prepare a Budget

Paying for school is only one of many financial challenges that you may face during your first year in college. You also may be mostly or entirely responsible for preparing and managing your budget. Living within your means becomes a very real necessity. Before you head off to college, prepare a budget, and review the budget with your parents. They can help you to determine if you left anything out and if your estimates are reasonable. Then, do your best to live on your budget at home before you leave the house. This trial run can help you to transition to life on your own.

Ease into the Lifestyle

Some freshmen are eager to get through college as soon as possible. While this is admirable, it may be better to simply focus on being a good college student for the first few semesters. Rather than overload your schedule with more classes than you can handle, consider taking a slightly reduced course load. This can enable you to get accustomed to college-level courses, learn about the campus’s resources, adjust to life on your own and even find a part-time job to help get experience or to make ends meet.

Focus on Time Management

Another area where many freshmen struggle is time management. For example, some see their freshman year as a time to party and live it up, and they struggle to pass most or all of their classes as a result. Others may struggle to pay for college, so they may take on a full-time job as well as a full load of classes.

Understanding how much time you realistically need to study and to make good grades in your classes is important, but it is only the first step. Remember that you may need to study, write papers and more for several hours per week for each class that you are enrolled in. After you have allocated time in these areas, you can then decide how much time you have to party, to work or to pursue other interests.

Some people flunk out of college after a semester or two. Others find that it is simply too challenging, and they drop out. You understandably want to be successful during this important first year in college, and your success as a freshman can lead to success in your future years as a college student. By focusing your attention on these four tips, you can make excellent progress on the path to success during your freshman year in college.