living my best life

Anonymous said to collegerefs: This gonna sound real sad lmao but can you write a post about making friends? I got to community college so everyone is doing their own thing & not very sociable.

This is an issue that many people deal with in college, even if they won’t admit to it. Sometimes making friends in college is just hard. Here are some tips to try to make the process a bit less difficult.

1. Talk to people on the first day of a new semester. 

If you don’t talk to people on the first day, you may feel too uncomfortable to try making friends a few weeks into the semester. Plus, it’s easy to strike up a conversation on the first day. Here are some potential things to say:

“Have you heard anything about this professor?” 

“Do you think this class will be hard?” 

“Do you know if the book for this class is required?” 

Once you have a conversation going, it’s not hard to talk to people on the second, third, and forth day. Typically students will sit in the same seat everyday, so try to talk to the people around you! You might make a new friend!

2. If you live on campus, try being friends with your roommate, if possible. They are a great connection to other new friends. 

You don’t have to be best friends with your roommate, but if you manage to be friends with them, then they are a great way to meet more new people! It’s so much easier to become friends with someone you have something in common with, and a great ice breaker is “You know my roommate!”

3. Take group work as an opportunity for friendship. 

Everyone hates group work. Everyone. But it’s also a great opportunity to make friends. Bond over the fact that everyone hates group work. Try to get together with your group outside of class. This is one of the easiest ways to make friends in college because you have to interact with your group, so you don’t have to worry about coming up with an ice breaker or awkwardly introducing yourself. 

4. Take to the internet.

Most universities have a Facebook group for each class of students. Just look up “[Your school] class of [year you’re graduating]” to find it. This helps especially if you’re a Freshman, because other students are often looking for people to get lunch with, explore the campus, etc. 

5. Get a job on or near campus. 

save a copy of your CommonApp as a pdf on your parents’ computer and in the cloud

like, a large part of why schools like that have such low acceptance rates (that get lower each year) is because so many students apply to them all (like i know multiple kids who applied to 5+ Ivies, and I applied to 6 UC’s). like you have kids applying to all 8 ivies, but really only want to go to harvard or yale or whatever and apply to the rest “just cuz.” which is fine, like i obviously don’t blame the students who do that (esp cuz I did it with UC’s and CSU’s) because there’s so much pressure on applicants to succeed and get into top schools.

but if you could only apply to two Ivies or UC’s or whatever, then you’d probably only apply to the ones you really really like, which would significantly cut down the size of the applicant pool for each school (esp the schools like UCLA or Harvard that underqualified people often apply to just on the off-chance that they might get in). A college list consisting of 16 schools (like mine) would be cut down to like 8-10 schools which is a lot more manageable for the applicant.

i’m sick of these schools benefiting from having such low acceptance rates and something needs to be done because schools like Stanford having a 4.69% acceptance rate is so ridiculous

You are all beautiful, intelligent people who are going to live great lives. Don’t place too much on one acceptance or denial. IT DOES NOT DEFINE YOU.

Now breathe. And go eat some ice cream.

Here’s another college application advice post from your dude Nathaniel. This one’s mostly for all the sophomores and juniors out there, and it’s about how to survive the SAT and/or the ACT.

Choosing one or the other

The first thing to do is figure out which test to take. It might seem confusing, but the SAT and the ACT are not that different. You should do a practice test for each around the beginning of junior year, decide which one you like better (and/or which one you did better on), and then forget about the other one.

I would recommend taking the PSAT (which is both a merit scholarship qualifying exam and a practice SAT) regardless of which test you think you’ll end up taking, because if you do well on it you can get official awards like “National Merit Scholarship Commended Student”, and if you do really well on it you can get money through a National Merit Scholarship and it might qualify you for scholarships at the college you end up going to. Take the PSAT in your junior year to be considered for the National Merit Scholarship program.

There is also an officially administered practice ACT. Your school might pay for all sophomores or juniors to take the practice ACT or PSAT, so if that’s the case, awesome.

You might also want to do informal ACT and SAT practice tests on your own, and decide based on that which one to take. 

Preparing for the test

I’m not going to try to give you advice about the test content, because I took the old SAT, which is no longer administered, but the advice I will give you should still apply: the best way to be prepared for the test is to do a lot of test practice. You should do practice sections, lots of practice sections in subjects you’re not as good on, practice essays, full practice tests, etc. The same types of questions come up on every SAT and on every ACT, and you want to be ready for them.

For the essay, read an old grading rubric if you can find one online, and make your essays be what they want! (For an extreme example, this essay got a score of 10/12 when I retook the SAT. The rubrics said a lot about clear thesis statements, and nothing about accurate content. Don’t do what I did, though. Please play it safe.)

Tutors?

You might be wondering about the possibility of a tutor (or a group test prep class) at this point. The truth is that most of what an SAT or ACT tutor will do is not teaching you the content but pushing you to do your practice tests every week. They can also teach you some handy test-taking skills specific to the test you’re doing. You can definitely get by without paying for a tutor or teacher, but you will need to find a way to make yourself do your work. Maybe you’re really dedicated and can discipline yourself to do test prep frequently, or maybe you need a parent to nag you

Getting practice questions

I highly recommend that you obtain a test-prep book, whether you buy one or borrow one or get a hand-me-down. This is especially, but not exclusively, true if you don’t hire a tutor. They have explanations and examples to help you with content and specific types of problems, and some of them have up to, like, 12 full practice tests.

You can also find sample questions online at the College Board (I think) and elsewhere. I believe the Khan Academy website now has test prep. (If you don’t know about Khan Academy, it has free learning materials on a wide variety of topics, with a focus on videos of the site’s creator explaining math and science content.)

Also check you school’s College/Career Center for free booklets that the College Board prints full of practice questions and information about the tests.

Retaking tests

If you’re not happy with your score, you can take the test again! When you apply to colleges you’ll send all you SAT/ACT scores, and it’s totally okay to take the test 2 (or even 3) times. Admissions officers will respect that you tried again and improved your score, but don’t go crazy with the number of retakes.

This is part of why it’s important to take the SAT early. You should take it for the first time during junior year and get it done with before college apps start, and that way if you want to retake, you can do that late junior year or at the very beginning of senior year.

No. No, stop right there. You are not worthless because a college said no to you. You are not a disappointment. You are not a failure. You are not better off dead.