Find the Best Online Universities

October 10th, 2005

If I had only one word to describe the way college is different from high school, I would choose this one: responsibility. For students entering college at the traditional age of 18 or 19, it is often the first time they have lived on their own, meaning they will be taking full responsibility for themselves for the first time. Many take on the responsibility of working their way through college—partially and fully supporting themselves financially for the first time. Unlike high school, there is no one to force you to go to class every day. It is now your responsibility to take control of your education and consequently, your future.

High school grads can also expect a greater level of difficulty with college-level coursework. Those who breezed through high school making A’s often have trouble maintaining those straight A’s in college, particularly if they did not take Advanced Placement (AP) courses or dual credit courses in high school. Even those who did take advanced courses in high school may struggle because high school students typically take about one or two AP classes a semester, where in college you’ll be taking four to six challenging courses all at the same time, with no “cake” classes to fall back on when you need an academic breather.

In college, you can also expect courses to emphasize critical thinking. Instead of focusing on choosing the right answer, college students must be able to reason in writing why the answer they chose is correct. No longer will simply memorizing information be enough. You will need to soak it in, retain it and thoroughly understand it so that you can explain it in essay form or in research papers. You experience this on a small scale in high school and on a much larger scale in college.

You will also set your own schedule in college with help from an academic advisor, where in high school you had very limited say over when you take certain required classes and schedules were often set for you.

Finally, the size of intro-level classes in college compared to the size of your high school classes may surprise you. You could be attending class in a teaching theater with more than 100 students for many of the classes you will take in your first and second years of college, where in high school, your classes don’t usually get much larger than 25-35 students.

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