To University and Beyond. Mandee Heller Adler

3 Before Your First Class

Good news for many of you: attending a highly selective college does not correlate with greater satisfaction, according to the Strada‐Gallup College Student Survey.¹ What does make people more satisfied includes “establishing a deep connection with a mentor, taking on a sustained academic project, and playing a significant part in a campus organization.” In other words, don't just eat your education like a customer in a restaurant (passively); go into the kitchen and season it the way you like it.

      David Alworth, a research associate in the Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, said,

       You should think about your time in school as time that you are intentionally shaping, directing, and producing. During seminar classes, for example, you should feel both obligated and privileged to help steer the discussion with your peers and your instructor. In large lecture classes, you might help organize a smaller reading or study group.

      One of the first things you will notice when you get accepted to an educational program is that the accepted students immediately start to connect with each other on social media. Your school will often create regional get‐togethers, which often continue through student planning well throughout the summer, as well as specialized online groups, for example, a Facebook or LinkedIn group for your class.

We recommend that you sign up for all of the online groups for your class and institution. These are wonderful opportunities to get to know your classmates and to ease your transition into your new educational home. Many of the friendships you make during the early months are the friendships you will retain for a lifetime.

      Prepare a 30‐second “elevator pitch” answer to the two most commonly asked questions you will get: (i) Where are you from? (ii) What is your major? Of course, you can answer these questions with simple answers like “Marin County” or “math,” or you can choose to provide insight into who you are and what you hope to get out of your education. You can also use your answers to learn more about your classmates. Perhaps try something like: “I am from Miami, and I love filmmaking and water sports. Where are you from? What clubs are you interested in?” And, for the major, try, “I hope to major in math because I plan to enter sports analytics after graduation. How about you?”

      Or, for students entering graduate school, be prepared to answer these questions:

      People love when you ask them questions. Two thoughtful conversations are far more valuable than a dozen forgettable interactions.

      Write very carefully your entry in the class directory and in any other social media systems used by your peers. Professors often refer to these sources to get to know their students prior to courses; this is the first impression you will make. A lot of people will search in these directories for students who share their interests, for example, students who wrote “Jewish,” “Chinese,” or “environment” in their profiles. Make sure that your entries use keywords that people might use in looking for people like you.

      Set up and manage one central hub for your online presence. Whenever you introduce yourself online, point to that platform. This way people can follow up with you, without being restricted by the platform where you met.

      The ideal online presence is a personal website, for example teten.com. An option with less flexibility is to build your profile using a service like About.me or Wix.com. The last option is to use a platform like LinkedIn. However, any individual social media platform like LinkedIn places restrictions on your online presence. It's much safer to set up a neutral venue. Don't build on someone else's platform; build on your own.

Mandee: We encourage our International College Counselors students as young as high school to start setting up LinkedIn accounts for personal information and websites, Facebook or Instagram accounts for a business or organization that the teen started or runs. This puts our students “on the digital map,” and allows them to create a carefully cultivated presence online. A professional LinkedIn page for a motivated high school, college, or graduate student is both acceptable and well regarded. By having social media accounts at a young age, you can also start to cultivate your network. Adding new friends or professional contacts to your social media platforms ensures that you don't lose track of them over the years, and you can easily reach out for future communications.

      When you introduce yourself online, try to include the major points that you'd cover in the first 10 minutes of an introductory conversation with a new friend. It's common that in an online class or community, the moderator may ask everyone to introduce themselves. Make sure to highlight anything memorable or unusual about yourself, as it's hard to differentiate when everyone is in a sea of the same font. Include a photo if possible.

      Also, include as many points of common interests as possible because each of them can be a conversation starter. For example, list the cities you've lived in, languages you speak, hobbies, something unusual about your family or background, pets. If the medium allows for hashtags (e.g. in Slack), we recommend hashtagging your hobbies, intended career field, and major. Limit your hashtags to four to six items.

      Here are sample self‐introduction from two college students:

      Hi everyone! My name is Nicole [Odzer]. I was born and raised in Miami, FL, and I am currently a rising senior at Yale University. I am majoring in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and I hope to attend medical school after graduating. I love biology