Your parents have probably been helping you resist superstimuli (drugs, alcohol, video games) and fight procrastination. If you will be living away from home for the first time, you will need to be especially diligent against letting these forces harm you.

Political correctness is an unfortunately fact of most college campuses, but it's still a fact. You can hurt yourself with your teachers and fellow students if you say or write something politically incorrect even if your statement is true.

Figure out if you will need a high GPA to accomplish your post-college plans since the type of courses you take can greatly influence your GPA.

Not showing up for class because you overslept (especially your first year) is a sign of failure.

If you like LessWrong you will probably enjoy microeconomics.

You can often negotiate your financial aid offer, especially if you have a better offer from a college of equal or greater prestige.

You can take classes over the summer at a local community college to graduate early and hence save tuition.

Be very clear in your writing. Your professor will likely count any confusion he experiences in reading your paper against you. ... (read more)

In many residential universities, there's a tremendous amount of social inertia--the people you're friends with a year or two in will often depend heavily on who you met your first few weeks, and who you met in the first weeks of classes. So turn this to your advantage: introduce yourself to people you don't know early on, and try to deliberately figure out who's a good fit and who's a bad fit instead of just trusting to chance. Making homework study groups for all of your classes is 1) a good way to meet people 2) a good way to ensure that you're on top of your classes and 3) a good way to ensure your work is spread out across the week / semester, instead of bunched near deadlines.

This advice may go against other advice, but it's a tactic that has served me well: in making early-career decisions, such as your choice of major, always ask yourself which choice preserves future options.

For example, let's say you are considering a major, and you are equally interested in Architecture, Literature, and Engineering as careers.

Under my analysis, I would ask, which of these choices preserves the most options?

If you choose to pursue a degree in Literature, it is unlikely that you will be able to parley those skills into any kind of job in Architecture or in Engineering.

If you choose Architecture, you will find it very difficult (though not entirely impossible) to switch into Engineering for a graduate degree. However, you may find that you can try to pivot into some kind of Literary existence more easily.

If you choose Engineering, you'll find that Architectural schools will be eager to accept you for a graduate program, and the difficulty of switching from Engineering to a Literature program will probably be equal to the difficulty of switching from Architecture.

So, under this analysis, Engineering is the choice that preserves the most future options. At the point of... (read more)

If you are a technical person, concentrate on metaskills (learning to think algorithmically and learning to do and read proofs is much more important than learning python and linear algebra).

I think more theoretical majors are better for metaskills (even if you are practically minded). But I know some will disagree.

Learn both data analysis and programming -- the world will be your oyster.

Science grad student perspective:

If you like books, it's often a good idea to read a textbook. This skill can be extremely powerful. If you're thinking about taking a class (that does not otherwise contribute to your graduation) because it seems interesting, try just reading a highly-rated textbook on the topic instead, and not spending all that time on the class. Like, classes aren't the end-all be-all of learning stuff. If you're taking a class that will require studying, reading a textbook on the subject ahead of the class will make everything much easi... (read more)

For pure lectures (no real discussion, just the lecturer speaking for a long time) in courses where there are good written materials covering the same content and presence at the lectures is not required, don't bother going to the lectures if they don't feel obviously valuable. Self-study from the written materials is likely to be a more effective use of your time; lectures are generally a terrible format.

It has happened more than once that a professor has assigned a textbook, which I bought, only for the professor to say in the first class that the only reason they assigned a textbook is because they were required to, but will never use it. Holding off on buying textbooks until after the first class (or, I guess, emailing the professor to ask if they plan on using the textbook) would have saved me several hundreds of dollars. (Having textbooks to study from is nice—they are, to me, the most efficient way of getting up to speed in math or science—but the ones professors assign because they need to put something down tend not to be the best ones.)

As with a lot of things, there is probably not a lot of good generically useful advice here. For example, the advice "do the absolute minimum amount of school work and spend all your time trying to build a startup out of your dorm" is probably terrible advice for 98% of people and great advice for 2%.

I recommend: 1) find a role model who is older than you, but similar in other respects, and whose lifestyle/career/situation seems appealing and 2) imitate his/her college trajectory.

Two important questions to ask yourself about the job a major will get you:

1. What is the unemployment rate on these jobs?
2. Will this job be automated in 5-10 years?

Health
-Your health is very important for your success
-Getting enough sleep, having a good diet, maintaining energy levels, and being healthy will contribute to your long-term happiness and success.

Sleep
-Melatonin is a supplement that many rationalists take to get better sleep at night
-Sleep Cycle is a good app that monitors your REM sleep cycles and wakes you up in a 30 minute time peri... (read more)

My advice is probably better suited for a liberal arts major (compared to a STEM major, say).

Learn more than you know now about the jobs that your field of study might support -- especially salary and life style. This seems like a big blind spot to a lot of students.

Go to professors' office hours. They are fascinating people and know way more than you do. (P.S. I'm not a professor.)

Audit classes that you wish you had time to take.

Actually do the homework before the class in which it is due. (This is less of a problem for STEM majors than in humanities and ... (read more)

You are paying for the classes, i.e. the attention and time of your teachers. Make sure to get your money's worth: if you don't understand something speak up, or contact the teacher after the class. If your class has teaching assistants contact them (for example by email) if you get stuck on the homework/exercises or don't understand something from the lecture. All of these people are literally being paid to answer these questions, be aware that this is a resource you have at your disposal at all times. A common failure mode is thinking: "It's embarra... (read more)

On the margin I think its usually better to take less and/or easier courses. It is better to do very well on an easier schedule than do "ok" on a hard schedule. If you apply for a job or grad school everyone will look at your gpa. If a semester is too easy this is not a serious problem. You can always read an extra textbook or do some coding projects in your spare time. Next semester you can up the difficulty. If a semester turns out to be too hard and you do badly the penalties are real (though survivable).