Early Assessment Program

advice from CSU students to high schoolers

Freshmen at Humboldt State University were given the following prompt:

You have now spent nearly a full semester at HSU. In the last few months, you have gained much new knowledge and many new skills, both academically and culturally. You are now an expert in adapting to the demands of the university environment!

If you could turn back the clock, how would you change your last year or two in high school? What do you know now that you wish you had known then? Would you have taken different courses or taken a different approach to the courses you did take?

For the purposes of this reflection, imagine sharing your expertise with a high school junior or senior who is planning to attend college. Responses varied greatly. Here is a sampling of their advice:

• I would have taken Calc for math my senior year instead of taking no math, because it took a little bit of catching up.
• Advice to a high school junior or senior would be to try hard throughout high school and take the SAT seriously.
• I wish I would have learned how to read more quickly.
• I wish I had studied somewhat for the SAT’s or I had not randomly filled in bubbles on my math placement test – try and avoid remedial classes at all costs!
• Learn time management – this will help your transition into college life/classes greatly!
• Make sure you know how to write well, this will take a lot of stress off your first year.
• It’s important to think ahead, establish connections with teachers or other people who can write you letters of recommendation. If your counselors and teachers don’t know you it makes it hard for them to write a recommendation. High School is fun, especially senior year. It’s the last year without all the responsibility of living on your own, so enjoy it, but still work hard and set yourself up for success in college.
• Voice your thoughts and opinions. A person who speaks isn’t just a body in the room, they are an individual person to the teacher. I did not speak in classes in fear of being wrong. Don’t do that.
• Biggest help of all…don’t procrastinate!! You are going to have a lot of papers to write and homework to do. Don’t put it off if you do you will only stress yourself out… majorly!!
• Be more social and don’t be afraid to ask questions.
• Learn that you won’t always have teachers that you like or agree with – it doesn’t change the fact that you need to do what they say and just deal.
• Cheating doesn’t fly – get over it now.
• Learn to accept people as they are and be able to interact and work with them as well.
• Become good friends with your high school counselor…they can be really helpful in this process.
• Work hard in high school and college will be easier.
• High school is not the end of your life. Trying to fit in really does not matter after high school. Just be yourself and don’t let anyone change who you are.
• If I could go back and change anything from my last 2 years of high school, I probably would have studied harder for tests and not been absent as much. Studying properly for a test is not just important so that you will get a high test score, its also important because usually all of the material you are being faced with will come back to haunt you in college.
• In most college classes you are only allowed to miss approximately 2 classes, so try to get into the habit of not being absent as much.
• Even the toughest class in high school is cake compared with college classes. I would have tried a lot harder in those ‘easy’ classes in high school, so that in case I wanted to transfer or get my masters at a better college, I’d always have that STRONG high school GPA to back me up.
• Depending on what college you go to, absences are very much out of the question. You get a total of 2 absences until your professor starts deducting points. By the 5th absence, you are kicked out of the class.
• To prepare better for college I wish I would have practiced studying for tests and worked more on the writing I did.
• Distractions are everywhere and they always will be, so get good at focusing on what you need to do.
• The only advice I have would be pay attention in math and learn how to write an essay, because there are a lot of them.
• Getting all your credits done for school is all you need to do. Go to class, do your homework. And take all the crap your teachers give so you can fling it back to them in the form of good grades on your papers.
• Take all four years of math!
• Get involved in leadership roles like student government or theatre.
• Study habits. Junior and senior years in high school I slacked off and didn’t study very much at all. Studying to me was almost foreign, I haven’t seriously studied since my sophomore year in high school. Trying to regain my old study habits here at HSU was hard, especially in the dorms.
• I would say to concentrate on English, math, and science or at least take them seriously, so that when entering college you won’t struggle with core subjects. If you have a grasp on the more difficult subjects you have the opportunity to take more elective classes, which is nice because college offers way more elective choices.
• Classes that challenge your mind and skill level are very helpful so that you have been challenged before, because first semester in college I’ll tell you right now will be challenging.
• School is a serious investment in time and money. Not only is it costly now for you to attend school, but it’s only gonna get more intense. But, the investment is still worth making - an investment in your future. Knowledge is valuable – and is the one thing that can never be taken from you.
• Be careful, senioritis is a dangerous disease and can easily destroy your college future if you aren’t careful. Save it for the summer. I know you want to hurry up and do everything you can with the people you’re leaving but you will have all the time in the world in the summer. It is crucial that you focus on this last semester academically rather than socially.
• I would have taken math in senior year, because I took precalculus in junior year and now I don’t remember a thing. Taking a year off from a subject is a bad idea.
• I wish I had more self confidence and higher self esteem in high school. I’ve realized that people who judge me don’t matter, and the people who matter don’t judge me. In high school, I worried too much about what other people thought about me.
• My first semester I got my remedial classes over with so I could move on and stop wasting my money on courses I already took in high school. What I have learned is that everybody should do well on the placement testing because even with good grades in high school you could end up taking remedial classes that have zero credits and waste your money in the meantime!
• I would have studied more, not just for tests, but right after classes, too. Otherwise, you just memorize and then forget right after the test. What’s the point of that?