One of the first steps when preparing for college is thinking about your classes. There are a lot of classes offered that you can pick from. There are history classes that focus completely on King Richard’s pilgrimage during the crusades, classes that focus completely on African American poets, or a class that looks at multiple world religions. When creating your first schedule, it might help to sit with an advisor while picking classes.

Another preparation you need to focus on is figuring out your living situation. A lot of schools have some sort of requirements about living on campus. You may be required to live in a residence hall or dormitory for the first or possibly first two years. If you are required to live in a dorm, the school will most likely match you up with a roommate or two. You and your roommate will want to be in contact to figure out who is going purchase what for the room. The school will send you a list of prohibited and acceptable items. Most dorms will allow a mini-fridge and a microwave. Items like coffee pots and hot plates are usually banned. To prevent having two fridges and two microwaves, you will want to make sure you clearly plan out who is going to purchase which one.

Decorating your dorm room is one of the fun parts of moving in. Lots of stores carry special merchandise specifically for dormitories. You will want to make sure you buy twin extra-long sheet sets so that they fit your bed. After all your linens are purchased, you can plan your color theme. One thing to remember is that whatever you plan on doing to the room will have to be undone by the time you move back out. If you put up poster on the wall, a tip for covering the holes is to use white toothpaste or whiteout on top of the holes.

Once you get on campus, you can visit the school bookstore to get your textbooks. However, it may save you some money to look into trying to find those books from a discount book website before you get on campus. Ordering books online can save you some money, but it also can be a huge hassle to deal with shipping. Also, purchasing items like folders, paper, notebooks, pens, pencils, highlighters, and index cards are going to be cheaper at a grocery store than at the bookstore on campus. There may be extra expenses like special calculators or a device called a clicker that certain classes may require you to purchase; however you may not find out about that until the first day of classes.