Day Classes Vs. Night Classes

When you’re in college, you have a lot of control over your class schedule. In high school, your guidance counselors figured out your schedule and did a lot of work for you right down to making sure classes didn’t conflict. Also while in high school, your classes were during a set time of the day. In college, you’ll have a lot more freedom with your schedules and the timing will be all over the place – you won’t be in classes from 7:30-2:30 every day like you were in high school. 

In college, you have the option to take day classes or night classes. These classes can start as early as 8:30 and go as late as 9:00, so if you’re more of a morning person or a night person, you’ll be able to find the perfect option for your schedule. If you don’t want to take the first or last class of the day, there will also be midday options that give you the best of both worlds. You get to sleep in a little bit and you also get to have time to yourself at night. Unfortunately, each side has their own pros and cons and there is no definitive answer which one is the best. The key is to choose what works best for you.

Yes, day classes start pretty early in the morning but not as early as what you were used to with high school. With taking day classes, you can have the evening to yourself for homework, studying, and hanging out with friends. The cons can be your lack of sleeping in so you need to evaluate exactly how early you can handle being in class. While you may only want to take night classes so you can sleep in and study during the day, you may not always have that luxury. Certain classes are only scheduled during certain times, requiring you to take a day class. Plus, during registration time, classes fill pretty quickly. That means you may not have your ideal choice of class time and by default may end up with the morning class. While you may think that you just won’t take the class if this happens, evaluate your options – if it is a special class that you’re really interested in as part of your electives, you may want to take it. That same class may not be available to take at a later time. While certain classes are only offered during certain times of the day, certain classes are also only available during certain semesters. If there’s a class you really want to take, you may have to take advantage of it and go without sleeping in on certain days of this semester. The same goes for night classes – there may be certain special classes that are only offered at night that you may need to take advantage of in order to take the class. There also may be certain night classes that have extended class times of a few hours and are only taken once a week. While night classes may seem more convenient because you get to sleep in, they aren’t without their cons. Your friends may end up taking morning classes because that is what they are used to taking because of high school. Nights are going to be the times they will want to meet up, which means you could lose out on some of your college experience which is hanging out with friends whether it’s at a coffee shop or just watching a movie.

You may find that the best option is to strike a balance, which will take more work when you’re planning your schedule but may be worth it in the end. Evaluate what classes you need or want to take during the current semester then find out what times they’re offered. Make your ideal schedule layout with a mixture of night and morning classes that will allow you to have some days to yourself that you get to sleep in and some nights that you get to hang out with friends.

Making That Tough Decision of Where to Go to College

Deciding what you want to do for a career and what you want to study in college is hard enough. Then once you decide what you want to do, you have to decide where. This is the part that becomes really overwhelming as you literally have an entire world of options. However, when you’re starting your college search, there are some questions you can ask yourself to help greatly narrow down your choices. It may even help to make a chart with some questions and features you’re looking for listed out so you can have a visual of what you’re looking for and where you do and don’t want to go.

First of all, start with the basics. Do you want to go to college out of the country or even out of the state? Don’t feel like you need to give a definitive yes or no to this question. It is entirely possible and okay if the answer is “Maybe” just like it is okay to make that definitive “Yes” or “No.” Even with these few questions, you can greatly narrow down what college you want to go to.

The most important feature of the college you’re looking at going to is what it offers for your program. Find out anything you can about the program from the college website and even college visits. Look at statistics from the college about the program and college in general. Research what the degree will offer you – some colleges may have features for the degree others don’t such as a dual degree program, depending upon what you’re interested in. 

College admissions representatives will be coming to your high school quite a bit. Your high school may even have a college fair with plenty of different colleges gathering at one time. Go to these events. Don’t treat them as a way to get out of a class. Treat them as a way to find out more about programs and colleges you’re interested in. Visit with any college that is relevant to what you want to do. For example, don’t visit with a technology college if you’re majoring in English or History. Again, don’t treat these as a way to get out of class. You need to gather information to make a decision about college.

Financial Aid is a large question that you need to consider that will really help you with your college decisions. If you go to college out of state or out of country, your tuition may be higher as you’re considered an out of state student and not a resident. This amount can get quite high and may be the factor that ends up swaying your decision one way or another. If you choose to make a chart with the features you’re looking for in your college, make sure you’re writing down tuition for each college on your list, especially if it’s out of state. At this moment, Financial Aid and tuition costs may not seem like much to you and are a foreign concept. However, the cost of the college is not something that you want to overlook. At first, it may not seem like a big difference between $8,000 a year and $18,000 a year because you’re thinking you can just pay it off with the job you get after college. That difference in cost makes a huge difference when you’re graduating and seeing the amount of loans you took out and what you have to pay back throughout your lifetime. Don’t just look over the financial aid and tuition costs. These are incredibly important and you don’t want to go to a college that is out of your financial range. 

Don’t go to a college simply because it’s in an area that you like. This is helpful, but don’t let it be your sole reason. Make sure the program is good and it’s within your budget. On your list of questions, colleges, and finances, you may also want to make just a general list of what you’re looking for in your college. Maybe you want to make sure it has a great library, maybe you want to make sure there are plenty of options for getting involved in sports. Whatever you’re looking for, make a list of it so you can ensure your college has what you need to be happy and successful there.

Once you decide on a handful of colleges that you are interested in, go to campus visits for those colleges. Sure, the college can sound amazing on paper and you know you definitely want to go there, but once you get to the college that can all change and you may not feel like it is a good fit for you. Don’t get discouraged by this – the reason for the campus visit is to help narrow down your choices!

College Clubs and Organizations

There is a lot more to college than your college classes. At first, you may just go between your dorm room and classes without really exploring all that college has to offer. While that may be okay for the first few weeks of college while you become acclimated to your new environment, it isn’t a trend you will want to continue throughout all of your years of college. Getting involved in college organizations, clubs, and more will broaden your college experience, help you make more friends, and help you feel even more like you belong at college. The problem is how. How do you get involved in these clubs and organizations?

The big thing that you will want to do is keep watch of college bulletin boards. These change pretty often, so you will want to check a couple times a week. This is where you will find out about plenty of things, from other college students selling textbooks that you may need to upcoming clubs and when they meet. There may even be announcements of club and organization fairs that you can attend to check out the different clubs your college has to offer. You don’t even have to be limited to one club or organization – get involved in as many as you want, but make sure you can handle them with the rest of your workload. 

Talk to professors – you may know that your professor is involved with organizations on campus for topics that you’re interested in. Talk with your professor, find out more about the organization and what you can do to join. Once you start joining clubs and making new friends you may even find out about more organizations you can join from those friends. 

Joining in a club or organization can be quite scary at first and you may want to immediately leave as soon as you go to the first meeting. In fact, it will take a few meetings for you to start to feel comfortable. This is a good kind of scary feeling though – it’s taking you out of your element so you will feel nervous at first, but once you start getting involved more, you’ll be glad you stuck through the nervous feelings because your college experience will be more fulfilling.