Hey friends! Welcome back to my blog 🙂 

Today I wanted to chat about my expectations of college that I had when I was in high school. I’m also going to touch on a conversation I had with a current high schooler, and her concern on choosing a major. 

In all honesty, when I was in high school, I had zero concerns about college. I wasn’t scared about getting in, I wasn’t scared about going, I wasn’t even concerned about how I would pay for it. I was confident that everything would work out in my favor. My parents motivated me to get good grades, however, they didn’t encourage me to maintain a 4.0 average, and I honestly wish they did. I wish that I had motivated myself to do the very best I could do in order to expand my options when it came to applying to colleges. I also wish that I had a rough idea early on in high school (and by early on I mean freshman year) of where I wanted to apply (like UC’s, instate, out of state, etc.) so I could know exactly what would increase my chances of getting in. 

The only real concern I had was if I was going to find friends in college. I think this is a concern that most high school students have when they are thinking about attending a university. I have an older sister who is one grade above me, so when I was a senior in high school, she started her freshman year in college. I watched her experience college for the first time and honestly, it wasn’t great. Her classes were difficult and she struggled a lot with making friends. She still struggles with making a solid group of friends. Seeing this made me nervous about going to college and just being alone while I was there. Instead of letting these thoughts take over my life, I used them to motivate me to put myself out there. When I got to college I put a lot of effort into meeting new people and finding a solid group of friends and it worked. Motivating myself to do so made it so easy to talk to new people and form new friendships. 

After chatting with some high school students, I found that there were two main concerns when thinking about college: how to pick a major and how to pay for college. I am lucky to have known that I wanted to be a biochemistry major since sophomore year of high school, however, I know that’s not the case for everyone. To that concern I say this: picking a major is difficult, but don’t stress, so many people go to college thinking they want to do one thing, and then they change their mind and that is completely okay. You don’t have to have everything figured out before you go to college, it is super easy to switch majors if need be. 

With that I leave you with some questions: what are/were your concerns going into college? Is there anything you wish you knew about college going into it?