I tutor high school kids as a part-time job. Lots of them about to go to The Big University, clueless about what to do. Here's what I always tell them:

1. No college degree is gonna be great all the time, no matter what the University Propaganda Machine tells ya. Look up the courses that you'd get with a degree: it tells you WAY more about what the degree is about than most info talks. If you find more than half of the courses interesting, it's worth looking into.

2. Be open to all studies. Don't judge a book by its cover. I had the idea in my head that I wanted to do something with CS or AI, because programming is useful and robots are cool. So I went around the country looking at universities and found...nothing. It turned out to be nothing for me. I had no clue what to do now, because I was so sure I wanted to be a programmer. So in an evening of desperation I said FUCK IT and went to the nearest university's site and read everything, about every degree you can get. That's when I found urban planning - in a small corner on the site, barely advertised because the number of people who start it every year can't even fill a bus. I would have never given it a chance if I judged it by its cover.

3. Find that inner drive, don't give up until you've found it. You're gonna do something for a while, better get something that you're so interested in that you'll look stuff up yourself. Think of what you like to read about (what tags here, for example?) and look into related studies.

4. Never be the smartest person in the room. This is not just literal advice: uni is a place where you can learn so much, just by paying attention and asking the right questions. From professors to the people you go to class with, keep your eyes open for the confident, the smart, and learn from them. Which you can do because...

5. You're in control. Fuck anyone who tries to coerce you into doing dumb shit. You can drop the people you don't like. There are tons of clubs and gatherings, if you're short on people to spend time with, just join a club that does something you like to do too. If you don't wanna party, just don't. Eventually, most people get bored of partying. My drink&party phase lasted 6 months. Most students realize way too late that they can...

6. Do cool & interesting stuff when you get the chance. Not just recreational, but also in an academic way. By always following my curiosity, I ended up in Hong Kong, Berlin (next week), Canada (in a month), socializing with professors (turns out, they're human!), being invited to a really great Urbanism Club, getting good grades, and most faculty staff knows me by name (and people have been talking about me). In just the first two years. Bonus: accidentally getting a great resume.

Hope this helps some! This isn't directly answering your questions, but it'll probably help at least somewhat.

I'm still in college, but I only have a year left, so I'll answer your question to the best of my ability from my experiences so far.

I'm an electrical engineering major.

In my opinion there isn't necessarily a school that is perfect, or that you could possibly know is perfect in any way before you go there. However, there are schools that aren't the right fit, and I think that is what is most important about deciding on a university. Make a list in your mind of what are dealbreakers in a school in terms of what you don't want to see, and stick by it. I chose my school mostly because it wasn't too far and it didn't have any of the things I could tell that I hated, or at least some things that I didn't necessarily like that much but weren't too important to me. Sometimes you end up liking those things that you don't really care for in a school.

I party often in college. And a little bit too much at times. But I'm able to balance my social life and school life so that I still do well. If I need to finish work, partying can wait. The only issue with this is that I really don't get enough sleeping much and nap during just about all of my free time. It seems to be working out so far. I'm loving it and wouldn't change my experience for the world, but who knows how I'll feel about my decisions in 5-10 years.

Not done with college but:

- On the Computer Science track. I don't absolutely love it but it's not mind-numbingly boring either. I get to do it, enjoy myself a bit, and save the stuff I love as something I don't have to do as a job, like writing.

- School I go to is close enough that I can see my family when I want/need to but far enough that I can have some space for myself, haha. The people here are mostly 'meh' but you can make friends anywhere, in my opinion. Just have to find the right people in the right places. So I guess in that sense it was a 'good choice.'

- I don't party at all, but that's just because that's the type of person I am. Don't drink alcohol or do any type of drug. That makes me boring to a lot of the people here, actually. One side-effect of weed, apparently, is the fact that you can't shut the fuck up about it. You can work hard and play hard, so as long as you don't go overboard, I wouldn't worry that much.

You'll probably switch majors at least once. Probably twice. Everyone will look like they have it figured out. They don't.

I fucked up. I started college for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time in my life, and without an end goal of my own, so I (mostly) failed out... slowly.

My advice is only that you should actually have a personal reason to go. If you do, things will fall into place as you hone in on your target, even if the exact mark moves a bit. If you don't, you will still meet a whole lot of very interesting people and love the experience, but the vast majority of worthwhile programs expect your focus from day 1.

Context and further explanation/justification omitted because it was getting long and too specific to be of any use to you, but I was Pre-Med, English Lit, Philosophy, and Computer Science. Things are easier if you start off with some kind of idea for a final goal.

I have been through three separate programs at a local community college. I started at age 18 with a general media course, moved onto a general arts & science course, and finished with a course dedicated to social work. I dropped out twice before figuring out that social work is the one thing I'm interested in. So here's the deal for me:

I love school, but only since I've found what I'm actually interested in. The only course I have enjoyed has been social work. I loved my college too, but I only am going to get a diploma for this and my ultimate goal is a Masters in Social Work. I partied a lot, but only at the start. I'm 25 now, and I have found that my drive to party is superseded by my drive to find purpose in my life and excel in my studies.

Despite dropping out twice, I don't regret a thing. At age 18, I would have hated social work. I picked it at the right time in my life. We all change as we age, so how was I to know what was right for me then? I still don't really know what I want out of life, how was I supposed to know when I was 18? My advice, ultimately, is to be ready to learn and engage as best you can. That's it - do your best, follow your intuitions, and hopefully things will work out.

Brief and hazy.

(I only went to "college" for 3 semesters before dropping out.)

I just finished my undergrad and have two weeks or so before I start my Master's program. What colleges are you looking at? I came from the SF Bay Area and exclusively looked at small liberal arts schools in the Northeast that had International Relations/Studies programs and Semitic foreign languages. My short list wound up being NYU, Northeastern, Clark, Goucher, American University, and George Washington University. Got into all of them except GWU but at that point, it was an easy choice to go to AU. It has one of the strongest programs in the country for International Relations, had the foreign languages I was interested in, a great career networking service and it's located right in DC. It was 100% the right place for me. I loved it from the moment I got there and made sure to try different things if I was worried about stagnating.

I'm kind of type A so I really didn't party very much except as bookends to my semester. I'd go crazy the first week or so back and the last week. I joined a sorority my sophomore year and, contrarily, slowed down my partying. It spread out over the semester more, usually one weekend a month, and was significantly tamer. Greek life isn't for everyone and it's also not like it's depicted in movies. Give it a shot or don't. It's not something I ever saw myself taking part in and wound up doing it on a whim. It expanded my social circle greatly.

I worked as a Hebrew school teacher my first two years of school which was pretty decent money but it was soul sucking because I really don't like children. I got a student job pushing paper as a baby bureaucrat at the State Department through my university, and I've tried a few different unpaid internships on the side as well.

I really don't think I would have changed much. The only thing I would recommend is getting a grasp on your mental health EARLY. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression in my sophomore year and getting medicated significantly improved my quality of life, and I really should have received some sort of treatment in high school but it was easier to hide it.

Graduated magna cum laude, honors in my major, and Phi Beta Kappa and I'm going to Georgetown for my MA. So. I'd say my experience was very rewarding :)

Okay, I have a bit of free time tonight before I pass out so here's my actual contribution to your question galen.

I'm still in college, this is my fifth and final year of a five year program, that being Chemical Engineering. Overall I enjoy it, though there are a lot of aspects I dislike. I enjoy the challenge of the engineering curriculum, not necessarily solving problems but finding problems to solve and looking at critical thinking. While being math intensive, there's a lot of interesting material science theory I have been able to learn and hopefully some interesting biochemistry and other elective based material this upcoming year. My dislikes for the program are almost entirely administrative. I dislike the clear favoritism that is shown towards some students, the fact that many things that are told to us are changed without us being notified about them well in advance, and the fact that our academic adviser is mostly useless. The most important part for me academically though, is the co-op program. If you're going into Engineering of anything like that I highly, highly recommend it. For my college it's a full 48 weeks of paid internship experience, with 40-hour work weeks. These are split up into 5 blocks (essentially one summer, a spring and summer the next year, and a spring a summer the year after that). I worked for three vastly different companies, and have a much fuller and more well-rounded resume than other engineers that did not have these opportunities. The work opportunity is possibly the most important.

The co-op program was the deciding factor for making my choice of where to go. I feel like I made a good choice but, college is what you make of it. I didn't have much of a plan going in in terms of what was going to happen socially and all that and it took me a year to find myself socially. It's been a ride since then though, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I party regularly, but not what you see in the movies. We get pretty trashed but it's a bunch of people from the radio station I'm a part of and then other associated friends in an invite only situation. Hell, we're having a basement concert and party at the end of this month and have done those semi-regularly. The radio station and my involvement with orientation have been the two best decisions I've made in the last four/five years. I've put a lot of work into my involvement with the radio station, had the opportunity to grow as a leader and political figure on campus at my college (this year will be my fourth year on the executive board of the radio station). On that end, we've been consistently ranked among the best college radio stations nationally, and were recently ranked in the top 10 by The Princeton Review. I've made my best friends through this, an ex-girlfriend, and met a lot of musicians and gained the confidence to start a record label with some roommates. There are clubs for every interest and I highly recommend getting involved with them. Spread yourself or focus heavily on one, that's your choice but check them out. You might find that being around people with the same interest as you that aren't necessarily in your major is a good thing (hint: it's a great thing).

Now on to Orientation, this is one thing I would have changed. I didn't get involved with the orientation program until last year and I would have done so earlier. It's been a great experience and this year I'm a lead OA which means I facilitate and train a group of OAs, who each will be responsible for a group of Freshman such as yourself during Orientation. You're going to find all sorts of people in your group, depending on how your college does it, and most of them you'll probably never talk to or see again but that's fine. Everyone else will be having the same or different struggles as you. Outside of not getting involved with that earlier, there's not much I would change. It's been a great ride.

I don't really spend all that much time studying or doing my homework, I still have a 3.30 GPA which is just fine for my major. I refuse to pull all-nighters and some people think I don't treat my coursework as seriously as I should. It's more that my values are different and my opinion of engineering is...indifferent...at best. Don't spend all your time inside studying unless you have a really great reason to do so.

I could write a lot more but I want to leave you with a couple last things to think about: Explore yourself, explore others, explore your interest, explore your surroundings. Explore as much as you can because you probably won't have as much freedom again. If you think you're going to regret not doing something, do it. That's something that took me a while to come to terms with and agree with.

I graduated a year ago. Be careful about the price you pay for school and job prospects afterward. I'll tell you a bit about my track with this chart:

Linguistics --> Jazz Bass --> Arabic --> Took 7 months off --> Linguistics

Those were my major. But I did a lot of other things on top of study. I was in the environmental club, took classes on systems science and computational linguistics. I also rode my bike a lot and was doing 50 + miles per week due to my commute alone.

But the most important thing I did was network. I got introduced to older, much smarter people who were able to guide some of my research interests. Then comes the biggie: I took time to wander the library 2-3 times per week. Sometimes on a weekend morning when most others were waking up from hangovers. Admittedly, I had some rough mornings along the way (it's all about balance!), but that was sometimes encompassed by networking. But back to the library: read anything that is not your major. And frequently. Then, bring something new to your peers from what you learned outside of class. Not only is this a way to uniquely express yourself in a classroom (which professors will remember you for) but it gives you some useful analogies to make in your writing, which you will inevitably do.

I smoked a lot of cigarettes in college, and while they are good for having an excuse to talk to people, the majority of my friends I met smoking in college no longer do it. Now, doing that for a few years won't kill ya, but a drunk car ride will, so stay the fuck away from that crowd.

In progress. Blank comment so I'll remember to address this tomorrow night if I have the time.

I'm on a retreat for lead orientation assistants right now and will be back tomorrow. I'll have a lot to say on that subject.

Stay tuned.