Before College

This is from my experience going to a US college. It will be different for you, even if you go to the same university that I do.

College is a lot of things. Freedom. New friends. Your major + what you study. Solo cup parties. Fraternities. Football. Prestige. When I was growing up, I was basically told so many things about college through movies and adults that I started anticipating college milestones. 

College has a few purposes:

1. Make friends

2. Figure out what you like / don’t like

3. Get me a job

Unfortunately, college literally does none of these things. So you’ll have to handle it on your own. Here’s how you do that.

1. Make friends

Year 0: Admitted Student

I think this is the most important.

Once you are totally sold on the school, start meeting people. This is important because the social interactions actually start even before you step foot on campus, especially if you want to find roommates.

First, clean up your social profile and make sure that it’s digestible. Change your bio to School name Year of Graduation. Make it public so people can see you. Make sure you have at least 9 pictures and they can see the best parts of you.

e.g. University of Nowhere 2002 or stylize it: UoN ‘02

Now, join the student groups and comment on incoming student posts that you find cool. This will help you start to make friends. Follow them, like some of their posts, and you can DM them if they have a cool story, which should start the conversation. To move from online -> offline friends, this is up to you.

Embarrassing, but literally make a post. This will make sure you get more quality people and you’ll have more of a choice. Most people are browsing and will reach out to you instead of you reaching out to them.

Your roommate(s) matters a lot. They’ll be with you for most of your first year and determine if you have a good time. Basically, this will probably be the person you go get lunch or parties or whatever with, just because they’re the most convenient. 

It’s basically better to be default neutral (not friends) than to have a future BFF as your roommate. The coolest person you vibe with might not be the best person to actually room with. In fact, if you already have a BFF from HS, I would not recommend you become roommates even.

There’s always a roommate preference thing, where it asks basically if you want your roommate to smoke, be loud, eat in the room, invite tons of people over. This is pretty much useless because no one wants a roommate who does that. Think about your own habits first … what are your worst qualities?

Now … consider 

Year 1: Freshman

Okay, if you are too introverted to do any of the above steps. Or you just decided to live a normal summer before college. It’s okay. Most of the real friend making happens in real life. 

Year 2: Sophomore

You will probably get a chance to live with your friends now. Think about this early. 

1. Your friends are not