Things you know now that you wish you had known when you started at U-M

Former transfer students share their wisdom:

 

• The amount of time it takes outside of class to earn an ‘A’.

• Where the good places to study are.

• The importance of using professors’ and GSIs’ office hours.

• Having to start your homework the day it is assigned.

• Where to park.

• That it is very vital to new students to establish a connection with people as it becomes increasingly important throughout your time at the University.

• That U-M is generally a very unfriendly school for commuters. Parking can be very difficult, and even if you live near a bus route, there needs to be a great deal of planning as you go about your day.

• I wish I had known that I can print out 400 pages of material for free.

• I wish I had learned CTools better before classes started. CTools is very confusing at first and takes time to get to know.

• I wish I knew how much studying and reading was required.

• The system of credit hours is very misleading, and the number of credits for a class is rarely related to the workload for that class.

• More information about financial aid, and when drop/add deadlines were.

• How difficult it is to transfer science classes.

• How to go about choosing a major.

• That I would have an average of 500 pages of reading per week

• There is no single bookstore as most schools have.

• The Math Lab is a great resource for math students. I have learned a lot from the math lab.

• I would have liked to have known that all students cannot register when registration starts. Many classes will be waitlisted by upperclassmen because they can register first.

• I wish someone had told me how difficult it would be to be a non-traditional student, and to have to deal with the elitism that seems to engulf the entire ‘traditional’ student population. I’ve been in college 4 years now. I have been at three schools previous to this one, and this is still the most difficult transition I’ve had to make.

• The use of email and CTools is extremely different from the community college, and it’s important to know that each professor at Michigan uses CTools differently. You have to stay alert.

• More about off-campus housing.

• Where to park in the morning.

• Which computer labs are quiet and which ones are loud.

• To start your homework the day it was assigned.

• To go to office hours more.

• I wish I had known not to take so many credits and such tough classes before getting my feet wet here.

• I wish someone told me about CTools. I had a 60 page reading due the day before my first class that I was unaware of because I didn’t know about CTools.