Starting University Advice Repository

Your parents have probably been helping you resist superstimuli (drugs, alcohol, video games) and fight procrastination. If you will be living away from home for the first time, you will need to be especially diligent against letting these forces harm you.

Political correctness is an unfortunately fact of most college campuses, but it's still a fact. You can hurt yourself with your teachers and fellow students if you say or write something politically incorrect even if your statement is true.

Figure out if you will need a high GPA to accomplish your post-college plans since the type of courses you take can greatly influence your GPA.

Not showing up for class because you overslept (especially your first year) is a sign of failure.

If you like LessWrong you will probably enjoy microeconomics.

You can often negotiate your financial aid offer, especially if you have a better offer from a college of equal or greater prestige.

You can take classes over the summer at a local community college to graduate early and hence save tuition.

Be very clear in your writing. Your professor will likely count any confusion he experiences in reading your paper against you.

If you need an extension ask your instructor as early as possible else he will think you are making up an excuse because you procrastinated rather than doing your work.

Doing poorly on an exam will not cause your professor to dislike you.

Before asking your professor a class organization question, check the class syllabus.

I'm an associate professor of economics at Smith College.

In many residential universities, there's a tremendous amount of social inertia--the people you're friends with a year or two in will often depend heavily on who you met your first few weeks, and who you met in the first weeks of classes. So turn this to your advantage: introduce yourself to people you don't know early on, and try to deliberately figure out who's a good fit and who's a bad fit instead of just trusting to chance. Making homework study groups for all of your classes is 1) a good way to meet people 2) a good way to ensure that you're on top of your classes and 3) a good way to ensure your work is spread out across the week / semester, instead of bunched near deadlines.

This advice may go against other advice, but it's a tactic that has served me well: in making early-career decisions, such as your choice of major, always ask yourself which choice preserves future options.

For example, let's say you are considering a major, and you are equally interested in Architecture, Literature, and Engineering as careers.

Under my analysis, I would ask, which of these choices preserves the most options?

If you choose to pursue a degree in Literature, it is unlikely that you will be able to parley those skills into any kind of job in Architecture or in Engineering.

If you choose Architecture, you will find it very difficult (though not entirely impossible) to switch into Engineering for a graduate degree. However, you may find that you can try to pivot into some kind of Literary existence more easily.

If you choose Engineering, you'll find that Architectural schools will be eager to accept you for a graduate program, and the difficulty of switching from Engineering to a Literature program will probably be equal to the difficulty of switching from Architecture.

So, under this analysis, Engineering is the choice that preserves the most future options. At the point of choosing your college major, you're too young to be screening off future possibilities. Unless you're completely gung-ho about Literature, and feel a real certainty about what you want, it's best to keep more cards in your hand and let yourself make that exclusionary choice when you're older and wiser.

You may find that reading the classics in your spare time and writing a little bit of fiction now and then more than satisfies your Literary impulses, in which case, you'll be glad you didn't commit yourself to it as a career.

Conversely, if you commit to Engineering and find that you hate it, it's always easier to pivot to the other options.

As a general rule, things that are perceived as more difficult are easier to pivot away from, because the admissions gatekeepers for the perceived-as-less-difficult options will find you impressive due to where you're coming from. This heuristic is valid at all levels, for example, if you decide to go the Engineering route, choose the subdiscipline of Engineering that everybody else says is the hardest, scariest one. You can always punt to one of the easier ones if you don't find it to be a good fit, but it's much harder to go uphill from where you start.

If you are a technical person, concentrate on metaskills (learning to think algorithmically and learning to do and read proofs is much more important than learning python and linear algebra).

I think more theoretical majors are better for metaskills (even if you are practically minded). But I know some will disagree.

Learn both data analysis and programming -- the world will be your oyster.

Science grad student perspective:

If you like books, it's often a good idea to read a textbook. This skill can be extremely powerful. If you're thinking about taking a class (that does not otherwise contribute to your graduation) because it seems interesting, try just reading a highly-rated textbook on the topic instead, and not spending all that time on the class. Like, classes aren't the end-all be-all of learning stuff. If you're taking a class that will require studying, reading a textbook on the subject ahead of the class will make everything much easier.

Grad school is not for everyone, not even for all smart people. It is however a good default for smart people who are bad at making long-term plans. Side note: attempt to spend some time a few times a year making long-term plans, so that you don't have to settle for defaults.

Social life is very important, but I have little good advice to give about it. Joining a choir went pretty well for me at least.

Research as an undergrad can be very important, but on average it's a waste of time - don't do it just to do it. In order to make it work you have to be above average in finding out what research is currently going on in the field you're interested in and at your university, and pick out groups doing research you are interested in and using methods that you are interested in learning about.

Once you're an upperclassman, if you're in the sciences, you should attend technical talks that sound interesting.

You will get a lot of advice. Much of it you will agree with. What will probably surprise you is the scale of the advice.

Paul Graham talks at some point about knowing that startup success follows a power law, knowing that this meant most of the value of the Y Combinator fund would come from their single best company, and then still was surprised when, what do you know, most of the value in their fund came from their single best company. It wasn't real until it had actually happened to him. As much as possible, treat the advice that you agree with as if it had already happened to you.

80000 Hours
The 80000 Hours Career Guide
An impressive career guide that helps people maximize future impact and future earnings. It gives lots of strong advice on a variety of career choosing topics as well as looking in-depth into a few specific ones. (This website was created for Effective Altruists, but can be used by others very easily.)

Adulthood Fallacy?
This is purely me talking. Do not trust someone to be wise, emotionally mature, responsible, or trustworthy just because they are old. This applies to everyone you meet in the future and everyone you already know. There are people older than you who are worth going to for advice, but they are rare and you will need other heuristics to figure out who these people are.
This is part of Argument from Authority but I think it could be a useful distinction. Most people are not experts on life anyway.

The Planning Fallacy

Social Skills and Networking Social skills and networking are extremely important for long-term success. People start building their skills and networks either in high school or university. Start early. I don't think I am qualified to give specific advice in this area, but I am confident in saying that these things are very important and worth spending time building and learning.

Outside LW Links:
Three Things to Unlearn from School by Ben Casnocha
What You'll Wish You'd Known by Paul Graham

LW Links:
Two More Things to Unlearn from School
College Discussion Thread
Interesting critique of British education by outgoing advisor
What Are Useful Skills to Learn at University
Which College Major
The Best Textbooks on Every Subject

Various books to read:
The Sequences (Start here)
Influence: Science and Practice (very important to learn how to stop other people from influencing you and from influencing yourself through the use of biases)
Thinking: Fast and Slow

For pure lectures (no real discussion, just the lecturer speaking for a long time) in courses where there are good written materials covering the same content and presence at the lectures is not required, don't bother going to the lectures if they don't feel obviously valuable. Self-study from the written materials is likely to be a more effective use of your time; lectures are generally a terrible format.

It has happened more than once that a professor has assigned a textbook, which I bought, only for the professor to say in the first class that the only reason they assigned a textbook is because they were required to, but will never use it. Holding off on buying textbooks until after the first class (or, I guess, emailing the professor to ask if they plan on using the textbook) would have saved me several hundreds of dollars. (Having textbooks to study from is nice—they are, to me, the most efficient way of getting up to speed in math or science—but the ones professors assign because they need to put something down tend not to be the best ones.)

Some helpful links I've collected over the years:

• https://www.quora.com/How-do-top-students-study
• https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/3jc9t5/cs_student_looking_for_ways_to_make_some_extra/
• https://imgur.com/gallery/pHUdq (Actual poor student cookbook)
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7673628 (A free cookbook for people living on $4/day)
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181101 (The most common errors in undergraduate mathematics)
• http://mathoverflow.net/questions/13089/why-do-so-many-textbooks-have-so-much-technical-detail-and-so-little-enlightenme
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

If you do something related to computer science:

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8085148 (work on some side projects, for example program an economy simulator, invent a simple layout/markup language, implement a LISP-machine in C)
• Get familiar with the UNIX command line, learn VIM and use Spacemacs as editor. Use org-mode for notes and git/magit for version control of all your projects and notes. Make use of a cloud service to keep all your files accessible from all your devices.

As someone who has developed RSI during their studies: If you feel that you don't have enough time to exercise, ignore that voice in your head and get a minimum amount of 7 minutes intense workout and 1 hour of very light exercise (e.g. walking, cycling or swimming) each day (and consider two sessions of longer intense workout per week, e.g. 60 min. swimming lessons). After each hour of sitting do a 5 minute break to stretch or drink a tea (Awareness.app for OS X is a nice software solution that can help you with that). A bad physical condition will affect your mood and mental performance negatively.

As with a lot of things, there is probably not a lot of good generically useful advice here. For example, the advice "do the absolute minimum amount of school work and spend all your time trying to build a startup out of your dorm" is probably terrible advice for 98% of people and great advice for 2%.

I recommend: 1) find a role model who is older than you, but similar in other respects, and whose lifestyle/career/situation seems appealing and 2) imitate his/her college trajectory.

Do go to your professor's office hours if you go to a school where professors care about spending time working with undergrads. Smaller schools seem to be good about this.

This helps make the professors like you if you are pleasant and ask informed questions. In theory, this can also help with networking later on.

Two important questions to ask yourself about the job a major will get you:

1. What is the unemployment rate on these jobs?
2. Will this job be automated in 5-10 years?

Health
-Your health is very important for your success
-Getting enough sleep, having a good diet, maintaining energy levels, and being healthy will contribute to your long-term happiness and success.

Sleep
-Melatonin is a supplement that many rationalists take to get better sleep at night
-Sleep Cycle is a good app that monitors your REM sleep cycles and wakes you up in a 30 minute time period when you are closest to being awake
-Setting an alarm at 9:30pm to be able to keep track of time late at night can help avoid the "oh god, it's already 2am?" effect. It also helps avoid...
-Hyperbolic Discounting

Diet
-You will be determining your own diet for the first time in your life
-Most freshman gain lots of weight after starting University due to poor diet and not knowing how to feed themselves in a healthy sustainable way
-Your diet is important for maintaining your general energy level and keeping you healthy
-MyFitnessPal is your new bestfriend for keeping track of what is in the food you eat and for losing weight
-If you want to lose weight: Avoid getting calories from liquids
-Eat and drink far less sugar. Sugar turns in to fat and has tons of calories. Soda and sugary coffee drinks are your new worst enemy

-Edit-
People on Slack reccomended
Cal Newport
and in the same vein as Cal Newport: Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy

The most important decision you will make is your major. It is easily in the top 5 of all decisions you will make in your lifetime. Yes, you can move on to a different job later on if you choose the wrong major, but your major will limit your options when you do decide to switch careers if you picked the wrong one. A psychology major simply won't make nearly as much if they later decide to become a programmer as somebody who majored in computer science from the beginning. A wrong decision can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime.

People say all the jobs are in STEM fields, but it's really Technology, Engineering, Medicine, and Business. Science fields that lead to jobs in medicine pay well, but science fields that don't lead to medicine tend to not do so well. Similarly, math is good because it leads to business jobs, but so does a degree in supply chain management. Medicine has the disadvantage that unlike the other three, many of the best jobs in that area require a graduate degree, and graduate school isn't a good fit for the overwhelming majority of people.

It's easy to think you should choose a career you love, but really you should choose a career you can tolerate that's in high demand. You might say that you're not interested in just making money, but that's limiting your thinking. You are likely interested in whether you like your boss, whether you can work flexible hours, whether you're allowed autonomy in decisions, and whether you can relax occasionally or are constantly bombarded with work with no time to breath. Whether you are able to choose a job that gives you those things or you have to make do with whatever you can get is often reflected in how high demand your field is, and high demand jobs are usually high paying jobs.

If you're in the bottom half of your high school class in both GPA and SAT scores, strongly consider technical school. Your odds of graduating with a good degree are very low. Similarly if you're not in the top 10% of one or the other you probably shouldn't be planning on attending graduate school, and even if you are in the top 10% you most definitely shouldn't consider yourself a shoo-in to succeed at that level unless you're in something like the top 2%.

A lot of career counselors aren't worth listening to. You're getting career advice from somebody who thought it was a good idea to get a Master's Degree for a job that pays about the same as a Bachelor's degree, and with poor employment prospects.

• Bryan Caplan's Advice to College Students
• Occupational Outlook Handbook
• Payscale Data on Bachelor's Degree Warning: these data are based on self-report, and some of them have low sample sizes. I don't think I trust the data on cognitive science for instance.
• The Economist's College Rankings

My advice is probably better suited for a liberal arts major (compared to a STEM major, say).

Learn more than you know now about the jobs that your field of study might support -- especially salary and life style. This seems like a big blind spot to a lot of students.

Go to professors' office hours. They are fascinating people and know way more than you do. (P.S. I'm not a professor.)

Audit classes that you wish you had time to take.

Actually do the homework before the class in which it is due. (This is less of a problem for STEM majors than in humanities and many liberal arts; in the latter, homework is often just reading.)

Do the optional reading, even if it really is optional.

Take extensive notes on the reading. In class, focus on listening. Good lecturers are synthesizing the facts you should already have consumed. Your notes from class should be much briefer. You should be able to study for tests strictly from your notes, without needing the book, except as an occasional reference.

Sit near the front of class.

If you have to choose between one semester of microeconomics and one semester of macroeconomics, take micro.

Take at least two statistics classes.

Leave your video games at your parents' house.

Learn an exercise routine that you can stick to for the rest of your life.

You are paying for the classes, i.e. the attention and time of your teachers. Make sure to get your money's worth: if you don't understand something speak up, or contact the teacher after the class. If your class has teaching assistants contact them (for example by email) if you get stuck on the homework/exercises or don't understand something from the lecture. All of these people are literally being paid to answer these questions, be aware that this is a resource you have at your disposal at all times. A common failure mode is thinking: "It's embarrassing to speak up in front of the whole group and/or I don't want to waste their time, I'll just figure it out on my own later" - if you have this thought contact the teacher/assistant after the course about the part that wasn't clear.

Ask for help when you need it. If you're struggling with a class, ask the professor or your advisor where you can find help. If you're struggling with life, find a counsellor. If you're struggling with a paper, find a writing tutor.

Take introductory Calculus, Chemistry and Physics in your first year*. At least at my school it was somewhat difficult to complete a science major in three years, so best to start off as though you are going to do one (unless you really don't want to).

Find a way to contact and talk to people who are where you want to be in the future. That might mean law students, engineers, med students, people working in finance.

*Unless you are doing Engineering in which case your schedule is mostly decided for you.

It seems to me that one reason why some people behave irrationally is that they start implicitly thinking about themselves in terms of a particular identity, particular archetype. If people of that archetype tend to be bad at a X and one is also bad at X, one might not feel the irresistable urge to fix it, even though intellectually one might agree that it would be better if they fixed it.

In a university setting, at least at the beginning, two such archetypes are "hard working (but not necessarily talented) student" and "talented, but lazy student". You might even observe a negative correlation in your university. However, most likely this is a result of Berkson's bias, because people who are both hard-working and talented are probably studying at a more prestigious university than yours, therefore you don't meet them. Thus whenever you notice that you are very talented yet work very little you should not think about how efficient you are, instead think in terms of not using your potential to the fullest.

If you are able to find people who are passionate about learning about similar things as you, team up with them (an example), create your own unofficial book club or your own unofficial seminar.

Try to be strategic. Use Paul Graham's heuristic "always produce". Write a diary where you can log what you have learned and what you still don't know.

Currently, most of the advice is very abstract and a lot of it is common sense. Perhaps someone from countries with a lot of prestigious universities (US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, etc.) could post more concrete advice, for example links or step-by-step instructions how to apply to a university, how to apply for scholarships and internships in your particular location, what other useful educational resources do you know? Even if such advice is not as generalizable as the more abstract advice, it might still be useful for some people, and even people from different locations to whom the exact wording of an advice might not be directly applicable might still find enough similarities that reading it is still useful for them.

Very impressive article by Sidrea on the real reasons and value behind university
http://siderea.livejournal.com/1261773.html?format=light

There are very few majors / areas of study where a single focus isn't significantly improved with a minor - and frequently, if it's not your major, Comp Sci is a great additional skillset. This is especially true if you need to take the credits anyways, and can choose between random course, or completing a minor with just a bit more work.

You want to do science? Almost no area doesn't need programming as well - it will help you get into grad school. You want to work in business? You'll spend half your day working on spreadsheets, and a CS background is invaluable for making that work better.

You want to do computer programming already? Great, what type? because a minor elsewhere will be a bonus! Video games? Comp Sci + Graphic Design or Literature Corporate work? Comp Sci + Business, Accounting, or Finance.

On the science of how to learn: Make It Stick.

On the margin I think its usually better to take less and/or easier courses. It is better to do very well on an easier schedule than do "ok" on a hard schedule. If you apply for a job or grad school everyone will look at your gpa. If a semester is too easy this is not a serious problem. You can always read an extra textbook or do some coding projects in your spare time. Next semester you can up the difficulty. If a semester turns out to be too hard and you do badly the penalties are real (though survivable).