Loans and Credit

Do you know how may students drop out before their second year of college? At some colleges, it’s 60% of the class. Here’s how you can be in the other group.

1. Remember that college is far more demanding than high school. If you forget where you are, you might not be there for long.

2. It’s not just something grandma made up…scientists have proven that you need at least eight hours of sleep to function properly. Get less and it can hurt you, no kidding.

3. The strongest beverage you should drink during the week is coffee.

4. Drinking excessively, even on weekends, is not “part of college life”, as some folks would have you believe. Heavy drinkers frequently fail to complete college.

5. Beware of procrastination. Keeping up with your assignments, especially your reading and your major papers, will make your life less stressful and result in better grades.

6. A good lap top can be your best friend. Take notes on it, revise notes on it, and use it to write at least two drafts whenever you have a major paper. Use jump drives to back up everything, and to make it easy to print out your work wherever there is a printer.

7. Frequently, students get off to a bad start, or even find themselves dropping out of college after carrying overly ambitious academic loads. Choose your courses wisely until you feel comfortable with the academic demands of college and have enjoyed some success.

8. Working while in high school may not be a big deal, but college will demand more of your time. Thus, you should not, under any circumstances, work more than 20 hours a week.

9. Lots of freshmen try to “suck it up” instead of getting help with academic, social, or emotional problems. Don’t be embarassed. Don’t try to tough it out. Get help immediately.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the intellectual ability of Albert Einstein is not required to be successful in college. But, you do have to make (mostly) good decisions. The ten suggestions above are a good starting point.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 7:51 am and is filed under Education.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.