THE ULTIMATE HIGH SCHOOL - COLLEGE TRANSITION GUIDE | RESOURCES | TIPS | SAVE MONEY

Table of Contents

Introduction

• Disclaimer

Advanced Placement Classes

• Importance
• Pace Yourself
• Prep
• Other College Credit Opportunities

ACT

• Content
• Prep

Searching for Colleges

• Tuition
• Campus Visits
• Clubs/Organizations
• Sports
• AP Credit Policy
• Prestige
• Niche

Applying for College

• Clubs and Organizations
• Personal Statement

Financial Aid

• FAFSA
• Personal Loans: Subsidized or Unsubsidized?
• Grants/Scholarships
• FastWeb

Choosing Classes

• Meeting Requirements
• Cross-listed Courses
• Course Grade Distributions
• Rate My Professors

BA vs BS

Conclusion

Resources

Credits

Introduction

As a regular browser of Education Nation, I’ve seen a lot of people asking questions about anything from ACT/AP prep to which major they should choose. While a lot of this depends on your own goals and interests, I can give you general advice from a hindsight perspective, as well as resources, which will hopefully give you a much more clear idea of how to approach college and how the decisions you make now will affect your future.

Disclaimer
I’ve prepared this guide because, considering the demographic of Steemit users, I believe the community can greatly benefit from it. That being said, the content of this guide will be most applicable to those who are from United States and Europe.

Advanced Placement

Importance
Prior to entering college, there are plenty of things you should do to make your college life much easier and save money. The first I’m going to emphasize is to take Advanced Placement classes! Take as many as you possibly think that you can pass - I cannot stress this enough. It is hard to foresee the precise benefits of passing AP tests before you get to college, but to put it simply: You are getting college credits for little to no cost.

To put this in perspective, a somewhat cheap university near me charges $330 per credit, and gives you 10 credits for scoring a 3 or better on the AP Calculus BC exam (5 credits for Calculus I and 5 credits for Calculus II). This means (at this particular university) you literally just saved at least $3300, assuming you can apply those credits toward your degree. AP Calculus BC is a special one because it counts for 2 classes, so most AP courses will only net you 3 or 4 credits, but that’s still potentially thousands saved.

Even if you don’t think an AP class could apply to your major, remember that every college program has General Education requirements, so nearly any AP exam you pass can potentially give you credit toward your degree. Every college and university will have an “AP credit policy” on their website that will show you exactly how each score for every exam you take will transfer into their system. Be sure to cross reference this with their general education and degree requirements to see exactly which requirements they will satisfy! All you have to do is google any school’s AP credit policy and degree requirements to find these.

Pace Yourself
While you’ll want to take as many AP courses as possible, you do not want to overwhelm your schedule with them. Try to spread them throughout your high school career. The way I did this was I doubled up on math courses (took two in one year) freshman year and doubled up on science sophomore year so that I was able to take AP Calculus BC and AP Physics B as a junior, along with AP US Government and Politics. Then I took AP English Language, AP Psychology, and AP US History as a senior. You could even try to take an easier AP course (like psychology) as a sophomore. The point is to spread out the courses so that you can take as many as possible while having ample time to do well in each. Also, if taking a summer course means that you’ll be able to take another AP class in high school, I would highly recommend that you do it.

Preparation
These courses can be tough and it all comes down to a single exam at the end of the year, so you want to make sure you’re prepared. This might sound cliche, but be sure to show up to class and do all of your homework. As you near the exam your teachers will hopefully be giving you problems from actual previous AP exams. If you do not feel that your teacher is preparing you well enough, there are numerous resources outside the classroom that you can use to help yourself. College Board is an amazing resource to use because they are actually the ones that administer the AP exams. They have a complete list of each AP course that you can delve into and view actual questions and solutions from previous exams. You can find this amazing resource here.

You can also ask your teacher for or order a study book that accompanies your textbook. My AP Psychology teacher was complete garbage and literally didn’t do anything, however, he provided us with a studybook that went along with our textbook. I studied alone using that book and managed to get a 4 on the exam, while only one other person in the class managed to score above 2 (3 is passing for any AP exam). Sometimes the classes can be challenging, but don’t get discouraged. The more courses you take the more time and money you save. Some colleges place a limit on how much AP credit they allow you to transfer in, but this limit is usually as high as two semesters worth of courses. It is possible for you to skip a whole year of college and graduate early if you do well enough in high school. That will save you more time and money than you realize now.

Other College Credit Opportunities
In addition to AP courses, my school district offered a “Youth Options” program that allowed the high school students to sign up for literal college courses at one of our three local colleges (assuming you met the prerequisites for the course you want to take), paid for by the school district. Students would take these classes at the college and have to commute back and forth from the college and their high school since they were taking courses at both schools. I would argue that this is even better than AP courses because you are actually in a legitimate college course. You getting credit does not depend solely on a single exam in May, but rather your performance in the course throughout the semester. This was advantageous for me especially because after junior year I had credit for Calculus I and II based on my performance on the AP Calculus BC exam, so I was able to take Calculus III as a senior in high school, which fast tracked me to finish my math degree entirely in 3 years (even though I decided not to graduate). I strongly recommend you see if your district has a program comparable to this, as it is just more free college credit. If not, just focus on your AP courses.

ACT

Content
The next test you need to focus on is the ACT. Unlike the Advanced Placement Program, you won’t be taking a course in school to help you do well on the ACT, but it is just as important as any other exam. Not only do colleges use this exam to help determine if they will accept you or not, but also sometimes how much scholarship money they will give you, so it is important that you do as well as possible. This test will include Math, Science, Reading, and English sections, each of which is scored from 1-36. The average of these 4 scores will determine your overall ACT score. You can also choose to take the optional Writing portion, which most colleges will want to see. The Writing portion is scored separately from the other 4. You can see an excellent breakdown of exactly the types of questions you will encounter as well as how much time you will have on each section here.

Preparation
To help you study for this exam, ask a counselor or teacher if your school or district ever hosts a practice ACT or SAT exam. If so, these should mimic the real exams and give you a good feel for what the test is like. If you are unable to take an official practice exam proctored by your district, you can employ similar independent study tactics as I described for the AP exams. For practice exams, you can go here. Be sure to time yourself and abide by the time limits. Furthermore, numerous prep books can be found online or at your local public library (yes those exist). I highly recommend getting one to accompany your studies.

You’ll also want to register on act.org so you can see the schedule of tests for the entire upcoming schoolyear as well as their registration deadlines. Through this site, you can register for tests, view your scores, and send them to colleges. You can take the ACT as many times as you need until you are satisfied with your score. Take it for the first time no later than spring of your junior year so that if you need to retake it you can do it again your senior year. You can take it earlier if you want, but the further along you are in your high school career the better you should do, so there isn’t much advantage in taking it your freshman year. The test is offered at least every other month during the school year, so if you take it early junior year you will have plenty of opportunities to do better.

When sending scores to colleges, you can choose to send your best overall ACT score. Keep in mind that you cannot send individual subject scores to colleges. For example, if you took the ACT twice and got an overall score of 28 the first time and 30 the second time, but scored a 33 in math on your first one but only a 30 in math on your second, you will have to choose whether you want to send the lower overall score with the higher math score or the higher overall score with the lower math score.

Searching for Colleges

After tackling the ACT as well as numerous AP exams, you’re probably at the point where you’re looking for colleges. There are many factors that go into finding a college that fits you, and most of those are dependent upon your own interests, financial situation, etc. Despite this, I can still give you general tips that can hopefully help narrow your search.

Tuition
In the United States, public colleges will have “in-state” and “out-of-state” tuition rates. Consider looking for a school in your state of residence, as tuition can be up to 3x more expensive for non-residents.

Campus Visits
One of the best things that you can do is go on as many campus visits/tours as you can. No matter how good a school looks on paper, if you visit it and it doesn’t feel right, you may want to reconsider. When taking tours, you will find campuses that will make you look around in awe of how amazing they are. It’s an exciting and motivating feeling. I did not take a single tour of any campuses while in high school and did not experience this until after visiting my friends’ schools. This is a mistake that you do not want to make.

Clubs/Organizations
In my opinion, this is one of the more important aspects. Especially at larger schools like mine, joining clubs is an amazing way to meet people with similar interests and will shape your college experience for the better. Many colleges have very unique clubs that you would never find at any high school. Most also have sport clubs that offer a less committing, recreational version of sports if you want to continue your high school sport without all the commitment and practices. These can range from Water Polo to Disk Golf to Wrestling. You can find complete lists of clubs, organizations, and sport clubs at any school by searching the school website.

Sports
If you are athletically inclined enough to compete for a starting position, find a school whose athletic program you click with or one that will give you an athletic scholarship to attend.

AP Credit Policy
Don’t let all of your hard work in those AP classes go to waste. If you are torn between schools, how these schools accept your AP credits could help you make a decision. Just Google “[school name] AP Credit Policy”.

Prestige
Not everyone does, but some care about the prestige of their school or program. This isn’t something I wouldn’t worry about too much.

Niche
Aside from the ones I’ve outlined, there are so many more categories to take into consideration when choosing a school. To explore these, I would absolutely recommend making an account on Niche. On Niche, you can search for any college or university you’re interested in and it will give you an extremely informative page that will include letter grades for each of ~20 categories.

You can click each category for countless reviews from students as to why that category earned whatever grade it got. As you can see in the sidebar on the left, the ‘grades’ are just the school home page. The column on the left extends down several page-lengths with options that will tell you everything you ever need to know about that school. At the top, you can also see that school’s national ranking (if it has one), location, number of students, out-of/in-state tuition, and acceptance rate.

Note: As you can see there is a grade for “Drug Safety”. I know for some of you over in the ‘Vices’ subforum you would prefer that to have a lower grade, such as the one at my school ;)

If there were only one resource out of this entire guide that you used, I would say use Niche. This will hopefully drastically narrow your search. Niche also offers services like “Find Scholarships” and “Find Colleges”, but Niche specializes in comprehensive college rankings/reviews.

If you’re having trouble getting to this point and don’t even know of any colleges you’re interested in, you can try using Niche’s or College Board’s college match service. Here you can fill in a lot of info about yourself, your interests, and what you want your ideal college to be like (location, sports, diversity, etc.) and it will match you to schools. I have never tried this before and would only do this if you are absolutely lost, but it is College Board (remember they administer the AP tests) so I’d assume it’s reliable.

Applying to College

Now that you’ve found some schools you’re interested in you need to start submitting applications. All colleges and universities will require your high school transcripts and ACT (or sometimes SAT) scores in addition to their specific application. You will also want to send your AP scores and your college transcripts if you happened to take any courses at a college while in high school. Not only will these be required for the school to determine any credit that you earn coming in, but they will also boost your chances of getting accepted.

As mentioned above, each school will have their own specific application. Here you will enter generic information such as your name, high school GPA, intended major, etc. After this, applications generally ask for what type of clubs/organizations you were involved with in high school as well as a personal statement.

Clubs and Organizations
In order to increase your chances of getting accepted to your school of choice as well as getting scholarships, you will want to involve yourself in clubs and organizations in high school. Sports are excellent for this, but it’s also very advantageous to join clubs such as Student Government, National Honor Society, and/or a community service club. Colleges, however, want to see that you were a leader in these organizations and not just a member. It is extremely important to include any positions or offices you’ve held whether it be team captain, treasurer, or secretary, as this shows that your organization relied on your leadership and responsibility in order to be ran smoothly as opposed to you simply being a regular member.

Personal Statement
The personal statement seems to be the thing that intimidates most students about college applications, and many students don’t know what to write about. Many students think that your personal statement mostly consists of you showing off your talents and why you deserve to be accepted. While this is partially true in that you do want to showcase yourself, colleges more specifically want to see you make connections between the things you’ve done and how those things will make you an excellent addition to their school. Furthermore, they want to know what you can bring to their school and how going to their school specifically is going to help you grow. Statements can be challenging because you have to communicate so much about yourself in a very concise, professional, and fluent manner. If you are applying to multiple schools, you should not use the same statement for each school. Doing this means you have just written a generic statement that is not catered toward the institution to which you are applying. They may be similar, but you will undoubtedly have to make changes when applying to different schools. Here is a statement I wrote when I applied as a transfer student to UW Lacrosse in 2014:

Code:

As an undergraduate student attending a college in my hometown, I am itching to get away and grow in ways that I simply cannot at home. What I would bring to UW Lacrosse is a passion to become the absolute best I can be, and a drive to become as involved as possible. I wish to envelope myself in a new atmosphere and community and be as influential and participatory as possible, whether it be through a leadership position in a club or a teammate on a club sport. After visiting several times and doing research regarding its prestige and opportunities, I feel that UW Lacrosse is an excellent medium through which I can achieve my goals, and I would be very excited to be invited into your community.

As a transfer student, I had to begin with why I wanted to leave my old school. You can see that I expressed an interest in developing and growing as a person. I then moved into what I would bring to their campus and made sure to explicitly state that UW Lacrosse would be a good fit for me. Your statements will likely be different than this since you’ll be applying as a freshman instead of as a transfer student, but the idea is the same. In this statement I probably should have mentioned some specific experience I had or club I was in and how that would contribute to my ability to “bring something” to that campus.

When you’re writing your statement make sure that everything you say has a purpose. Let’s say you were on the football team. How has that developed you as a student or leader? How will that experience help you contribute to the culture of that university? How has it taught you to succeed? Through hard work? Leadership? Anything and everything you mention in your statement should be accompanied with how that has developed you as a student, how it helps you bring something to their campus, or show your motivation and interest in learning and becoming a better person. Remember to be concise and efficient in your wording, for example you could start off with something like:

Code:

From developing leadership skills through being captain of the football team and vice president in Student Government to helping others through community service….

By saying something like that you’ve fit all of your clubs, positions you’ve held in those clubs, how those clubs influenced you (in this case, became a leader), and that you’ve done volunteering all in a single sentence.
You don’t have to and probably shouldn’t go into extreme detail about any certain thing unless asked.

Many colleges will also have multiple statements where they ask you something more specific, so make sure you read the prompt carefully before answering, and always have someone proofread your statement(s) before submitting your application.

Financial Aid

FAFSA
Congratulations on getting accepted to college! Now you have to figure out how to pay for it. Most of you will likely seek some sort of financial assistance to help fund your education. The most common student loan people apply for is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Loans via the FAFSA are loans from the government given to students with low interest rates. The amount will get will depend on your dependency status, your parents’ marital status, your parents’ income, and much, much more. Furthermore, you will generally get more money the further along you are in your education. Submitting the FAFSA as soon as you’re able can increase the amount of money they will loan you, so don’t procrastinate. Remember, however, that the more money you take out in loans, the more you will have to pay back. Also note that you will have to reapply for the FAFSA every year.

Personal Loans: Subsidized or Unsubsidized?
Many students also take out personal loans to supplement FAFSA if FAFSA will not fully cover their tuition. I am nowhere near qualified to tell you where to take personal loans from, but I can tell you to obviously aim for low interest rates. Some may also require a co-signer, so make sure you have someone who is willing to do that for you.

When looking for loans I would suggest you understand the difference between subsidized and unsubsidized loans. In short, subsidized are better in that you will not accrue interest until after you graduate, whereas interest on unsubsidized loans will begin accruing immediately. For example, I personally have already accrued $770.53 in interest from my unsubsidized loans even though I haven’t even graduated yet.

Furthermore, if you choose not to pay the interest of your unsubsidized loans while you’re in school, your loans will capitalize. This means that the interest you have accrued thus far will be added to the principle amount of your loan (the amount you originally borrowed). What this means is that any interest you accrue from then on will now be calculated based on this new principle amount after capitalization instead of your original principle amount. This can get quite complicated and costly so just go for subsidized loans and take out as little as you have to. If you want to read more about un/subsidized loans, visit this page.

Grants/Scholarships
While loans will be helpful in funding your education, you really do want to do everything in your power to reduce the amount of money you take out in loans (such as taking AP classes!). In terms of financial aid, this will be in the form of grants and scholarships. Grants and scholarships are simply monies awarded toward your tuition/educational expenses that you do not have to repay. These can be awarded based on financial need, academic merit, community involvement, sports, and much more. Nearly any university you consider will offer scholarships that you can apply for, just find them on their website. You should also ask your high school counselor if your school district gives scholarships to students for any reason (Mine gave a certain amount of money every year for four years to the top 5 ranked students who went to a college/university in my state).

FastWeb
Most scholarships are offered by third party sources. These are especially great because if you win one you can apply the money to any school you go to. There are several websites that do an excellent job of collecting and organizing these scholarship opportunities for you, but the best one I know of is FastWeb. On FastWeb, you create a personal account that will help the site match you with scholarships you are eligible for that most closely match your abilities and interests, therefore increasing your chance of applying and potentially winning. FastWeb always updates with new scholarship opportunities and will notify you with ones that match you. It’s an excellent service and a necessity for scholarship seekers!

Aside from scholarships, FastWeb also offers information regarding FAFSA, private loans, career planning internships, and more, however, just as how Niche specialized in college rankings, FastWeb specializes in scholarships. I have not looked into these resources, but considering how renowned FastWeb is I’m sure they are worth the read.

Choosing Classes

Meeting Requirements
Finally, you’ve graduated high school, gotten accepted to your college of choice, and got all your finances sorted out. Just when you thought the shit storm was over, now you have to figure out your course schedule. Your school may have freshman advisors to assist you in picking your first classes, but you want to be in a position where you understand why they are recommending certain courses to you.

If you know what you want to major in, I would advise either studying the course requirement list (which you can find on the school website) to the point where you know exactly what you need by memory or printing it out. This also goes for the General Education requirements, so go to your school website and print out the General Education requirement sheet. When you are signing up for classes, make sure that every single course you are taking is satisfying some requirement, whether it be a gen ed or for your major. Also, pay attention to prerequisites for upper level classes that you need and make sure you take those sooner rather than later. If you don’t know your major right away that’s okay, as you will likely be taking mostly gen eds as a freshman. It’s even better if you do know your major right away so you can start hammering out requirements (especially if you’re in the sciences and already have calculus done from AP testing). This can shoot you well ahead of your peers, as simply having done Calculus I, II, & III in high school literally put me in a position to graduate in 3 years.

Cross-listed Courses
One extremely important thing that can fast track your college career is something that not many freshmen know about: cross-listed courses. Cross-listed courses are courses that are considered to be equally relevant to more than one department or subject, and therefore can count towards more than one requirement. For example, at my current school I need the following general education requirements: 3 credit Ethnic Studies, 6 credit Social Sciences. I found a 3 credit course that is considered an Ethnic Studies but is also cross-listed with Social Sciences. This means that upon completion of this course I will need: 0 credit Ethnic Studies, 3 credit Social Science. Keep in mind that even though this course satisfies two different requirements, I still will only earn 3 credits, not 6. So remember that if you “double-dip” like this too much you may not reach the minimum credit requirement for graduation by the time you satisfy all other requirements, but if you come in with enough AP credits you shouldn’t have to worry about that happening.

In my experience, people tend to overlook cross-listed courses, but I take advantage of them as often as possible. My previous example is a real decision I made, and even though that Ethnic Studies course was not my first choice, the fact that satisfied 2 requirements at once made it my priority to take. Taking cross-listed courses can help you graduate a semester or even a year early. If nothing more, it can reduce your course load your senior year. Cross-listed courses can save you loads of time, work, and money, even if it only saves you one class.

Note: Cross-listed courses don’t only apply to gen eds. If you’re double majoring and the majors are similar enough, there may be courses that can count as an elective toward both majors. Back when I was attempting a triple major in Math, Computer Science, and Physics at my old school, I found 2 courses that were cross-listed between Computer Science and Physics. Take these 2 courses became my priority to take because together they effectively satisfied 4 requirements.

Course Grade Distributions
Lastly, when choosing classes you should be aware that some school offer a "Course Grade Distribution" resource. This is something I had never heard of until I transferred to a large public university, so it may not be common among smaller schools, but you definitely need to check if your school has it. What this resource does (at least at my school) is provide you with the ability to select any previous semester and view the grade distribution for any course in that semester - that is, the percentage of A's, AB's, B's, BC's, C's, D's and F's that the students in that class earned.

For example, I just signed up for courses for my spring semester. When choosing classes, I would cross-reference them with the grade distribution of those same classes the previous spring and try to get into classes that had a high grade distribution. The higher the grade distribution the more likely that it will be easier to get a good grade in the class. You can explore how this resource works for my school here, and I highly encourage you to check if your school offers something similar.

Rate My Professors

If you so desire, you can also use Rate My Professors to get student reviews of what the professors you will have are like. You can search for your school or for specific instructors. I don’t do this, as I don’t like to go into courses with preconceived notions about how difficult they will be or anything else, but it’s a resource nonetheless if you’re interested.

BA vs BS

Depending on which school you go to, you will either be working towards a Bachelor of the Arts or Bachelor of the Sciences. Some schools (like liberal arts schools) only offer one type, but others allow you to choose either. The difference between these degrees generally is that the Bachelor of the Arts gives you a more well rounded education with more humanities requirements and, whereas the BS has less humanities requirements and focuses more on the sciences and math. Here is an example of the difference at my school: BA/BS requirements.

Conclusion

As a teenager who likely has no clue what s/he wants or what college has to offer, finding the perfect college for you might seem like a daunting task. The experiences you have at college will absolutely shape the person you will become. You might feel a lot of pressure to make the “right” choice, but don’t worry. It’s an enormous world and no matter which path you take, you will make lifelong friends and memories.

Hopefully this guide has helped or will help your transition into college. If you’ve made it all the way to the point where you’ve gotten in and picked your classes then I’m excited for you. You are ready to start a new chapter in your life!

Resources

Here is a comprehensive list of all resources linked in this guide:
College Board (AP Prep)
Content of ACT
ACT Prep
ACT Registration
Niche College Reviews
College Board’s College Match
Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)
Subsidized Loans vs. Unsubsidized Loans
FastWeb Scholarships
Course Grade Distributions
Rate My Professors
Sample BA vs. BS requirements 

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