5 college study habits you should start in high school

Are you nervous about your freshman year of college? Try practicing these study habits your senior year of high school to prepare for your first college classes.

1. Invest in a highlighter
You can expect a lot of reading in college and, realistically, you probably can’t take notes on it all. So buy a highlighter and use that when you come across important information. I know, I know. You can’t mark up your high school’s textbooks. But consider practicing this method when you have to find articles and essays for a research paper.

2. Create outlines
Writing a 10-page paper off the top of your head is really hard. You can make the process a little easier by planning the organization and main ideas of your essay beforehand. Even if you just make notes for a 3-page paper for your senior English class, it will help you prepare for college in the long run.

3. Find out what a ‘thesis’ is
You might think you know what a thesis is, but writing in college is very different from writing in high school. In a nutshell, a thesis is a sentence that tells your reader exactly what you will discuss and prove in your paper. It’s not as simple as it sounds. You can prepare for your freshman writing class by crafting some practice theses on your own now.

4. Buy a planner with a built-in calendar
When you receive your syllabi during your first week of college, write down the due dates of any projects, papers or tests in your calendar. That way, you can look at the entire month and see which weeks will be busy. You can plan the fun stuff around the work stuff.

5. Learn how to cite your information
Whether you are assigned small papers or semester-long projects, you should learn how to cite the sources you use. You will most likely use MLA Style during your freshman year, but there are other citation styles out there. Use online sources or a handbook to learn how to use in-text citations, footnotes and a bibliography. Plagiarism is taken very seriously in college and you should start avoiding it in high school.

Written by Rachel Montpelier. Rachel is a senior at Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y. and is the editorial assistant at NextStepU.

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