Succeeding in college is both easy and hard. It takes planning, drive, and dedication, but once you commit to the required changes, the payback is worth it. The first big tip: College is not like High School. Succeeding in the former in no way predicts success in the latter.

With High School graduation close, college on the horizon, one of our Ask a Tech Teacher contributors put together a list of great tips and ideas to help you prepare for one of the biggest steps you can take to build your future:

How to Prepare for College

College preparation is crucial to ensuring that your college life is successful. It helps boost your independence and self-discipline to tackle the difficulties you might encounter while giving you a holistic view of the whole preparation process. Excellent college preparation makes you self-aware and helps you evaluate what you’d love to do in school. It enables you to choose a learning institution depending on your strengths. While preparing for college can be challenging, knowing how to do it well can help make the process more successful. Here’s how to prepare for college.

Join a college readiness bootcamp program

College readiness bootcamp programs are an excellent way to help learners overcome personal and academic barriers to achieving college success while ensuring a seamless transition into higher learning. Attending such a bootcamp equips you with better study strategies and boosts your confidence starting school and building foundational relationships with staff, peers, and faculty.

Based on what you want to study in college, bootcamps provide academic coursework and engagement activities to ensure you’re better prepared to begin your college journey. For instance, if you’re an aspiring software developer, a coding bootcamp for beginners would be a perfect way to prepare for college.

Start college preparation early

College preparation isn’t just about academics. And when you start preparing early, you can effectively build the resilience, confidence, and independence you need to handle independent living, set study goals, gain time management skills, establish positive habits, and learn how to create a social life. Work towards getting good grades because they’re key to gaining admission to your desired college.

Learn how to work in a team, ask questions, and do presentations. Build and improve your written and verbal communication skills to ensure you can confidently and fluently articulate your ideas and thoughts. Become a critical thinker to help with your college research. You can achieve this by learning how to scrutinize data, make decisions, and handle hypotheses.

Pick the right high school classes

The high school classes you pick are essential because, during college admissions, the admitting officers look for a robust learning foundation you can expand on in higher learning. If you already know the career path you want to follow, choose your high school classes based on your areas of interest.

If you’re unsure, you can take English to boost your writing skills, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Math, including geometry and algebra, can help you pass admission tests and later in college math classes. Science will teach you analytical thinking and how to implement theories in real life. You can also take foreign languages, social studies, and arts.

Prepare for college entrance exams

College entrance exams enable higher learning institutions to choose the best students to join their colleges. They measure your capacity and intelligence. Adequate preparation is the best way to pass these exams and secure your spot in your preferred college. You can take as many practice tests as possible and request comprehensive score reports to identify improvement areas. This will help you ace the college entrance test.

Choose extracurricular activities

Extra-curricular activities are an excellent way to keep busy and build other skills outside classwork. You can find interest in sports, music, theater, debate, art, and more. If you have a passion, follow it or explore new things.

Endnote

Prepping for college can be challenging. However, implementing these tips can help you better prepare for college.