Rutgers University-New Brunswick Top Questions

Looking back at my naive high school self, there is so much advice I would give him to set myself up for an extremely successful future. The most important idea to convey to him is to understand that he is not a genius. Compared to the many people he is going to meet, he is going to realize he is just barely above average. Even though he found high school to be extremely easy and thought he was going to conquer the world after he breezed through college, nearly everything coming up in the next 10 years at least is going to be exponentially difficult. I would also like to convince my high school self that he is going to fail many times in areas that he was sure he never would. Even so, it is important to not let any of my advice discourage him from reaching his goals. I would actually remind him that success is going to be attained, it is just going to be a lot tougher than high school falsely portrayed it to be.

college is money. is not a game once i entered to college i have to take it very seriously, because education is my future.

Take advantage of a higher edcuation.

If I could go back in time and talk to myself as a highschool senior, I would tell myself many things. In highschool, there is only so much you can take advantage of and unfortunately, you may not be informed of many scholarships or grant opportunities that you really need in order to afford college. With that being said, I would have told myself to apply for more scholarships, and not just the ordinary scholarships that appear everywhere online but those that actually will give me a fair chance to win and help pay for my tuition. Living with a single parent, it is extremely hard to afford a college education and to pay for books so I tried my best to apply for as many scholarships as I could but most of them seemed as if they were scams or there were thousands of applicants and I was just viewed as another number in the bunch. If I could go back, I would tell myself to apply to more local scholarships and pray that I would be that lucky applicant to receive funding for my college education.

If I could go back in time I probably wouldn't tell myself anything. Part of the college experience is not knowing how things will turn out and learning from those experiences. Even though there were things I wish I knew ahead of time such as how for some reason it always seems the hardest around the middle of the sememster or how tests work for each class is different, but at the same time I'm happy knowing I figured these kinds of things out on my own.

Go where your heart really wants to. If I could do it all over again I would have gone to a warmer climated area such as Hawaii, California, or Florida.

I would encourage myself to take more risks in life and at school - study abroad, act in a play, run for city council, develop an independent course to study my family history. I would encourage myself to smile more and be more open to meeting new people, especially people who seem different. I would suggest that I start running and cooking clubs to share my love of running and great food! I would also encourage myself to look at failure as a means to success, as incredible learning experiences and not through a negative lens, so that I would take more risks at school and in life. Finally, I would suggest that I take more pictures because it goes so fast and it is such an amazing experience. I wish that I had more photos to remember the amazing friends that I made and the fun that we had as college students.

The advice that I would have given myself based upon the experience that I have endured about the college life and making the transition is to practice time management according to the material that I am studying. Time management is very important to overall performance. The more time that you have to study and complete work, such as papers and assignments, the more valuable and qualitive it will be. Also, do not just take the notes that are given on the projector in class, but also notate signinificant points of the professor's dialogue. It is very beneficial and may assist with overall understanding and higher scores on tests. Last, prepare financially as possible prior to each semester by applying for as many scholarships, grants, and even saving financial aid money that is left over, if you receive financial aid. This way you do not accrue a large amount of debt post graduation. Also, your education will always be secured, if your financial aid is cut at your school or if the tuition raises and you only had a certain amount of money, this will be your cushion to fall back on to still reach your goal.

Every freshman should know that they dont know! What I mean is that no matter how u think the college experience is going to be, what you are anticipating, you are wrong. Is this a bad thing? NO! Its good because you will have the chance to get used to things and become adapted. Make this place your environment, explore, become habituated, and make this place feel like home. It is nervous at first, yes indeed, but that feeling dissipates fast and comfort settles in. Just be ready to get on top of your TIME MANAGEMENT! You will have a rough few months here if your time management is far off, so please buy yourself a planner, utilize that app on your phone, something.

USE THE COURSE SCHEDULE PLANNER! I apologize for the caps, but it had to be done. This is seriously the best tool ever invented for registering for classes. You can type "course schedule planner" into the main Rutgers website and it should come up. It helps you find classes and arranges all the possible schedules for you to scroll through and see which ones fit best for you. Nobody told me about this before I registered for my first classes and I really messed up my schedule. Other helpful hints: Call before you go to an office to work out any problems/questions you might have- there's a lot of bureaucratic red tape at Rutgers, and I've gone to an office more than once only to be told that my question was handled by a different office on a different campus and that the people there could not help me. I wasn't very happy, but I should have called and found out first. Come up with pneumatic devices to help you learn the bus routes quickly. It's really not that hard once you've been here a while, but I remember being very intimidated when I first got here and that helped me. The bookstores downtown will let you rent books to use for your classes if they have them in stock. This means that there is no reason to buy textbooks for classes that you know you're never going to look at ever again, and it is much easier than trying to sell back books at the end of the semester.