How to play your first year of university (when you want to go to professional school)

The first year of university is hard. A lot of the time it’s your first time away from home. You need to learn how to survive on your own while trying to make friends and to keep up with the rigours of school, and there’s an overlying pressure to get a thousand and one things done so that your application to professional school looks amazing. So let’s chill out for a second and take things one step at a time.

Let’s forget about extracurriculars, research, volunteering, blah blah blah. Clear the field. Initially, the primary focus is going to be to get as good as you can at studying. You’re going to be a professional student for the next 7 or 8 years at least, and now is the perfect time to start developing good study habits. I hate to break it to you, but the things that worked in high school likely aren’t going to work in university. So look up evidence based study strategies, like the Pomodoro technique, the Feynman technique, active recall and spaced repetition. If you’re not sure where to start, check out these folks right here:

• Ali Abdaal
• Thomas Frank
• Elizabeth Filips
• Vee Kativhu
• Justin Sung

Keep in mind that this is going to be a work in progress - the goal is not to be a god-tier student right off the bat. Build these things up slowly, step-by-step. Learning how to study and manage your time will take time, and that is okay.

"One of the best things you can do to boost your grades and improve your understanding of content is totally free, takes less than an hour a week. That’s talking to profs."

I know that there’s a lot of pressure to start extracurriculars and research and so on and so forth, but try not to worry about that too much in this stage. Studying first. All the other stuff doesn’t matter if you don’t have good grades, so focus on getting comfortable with studying.

One of the best things you can do to boost your grades and improve your understanding of content is totally free, takes less than an hour a week, but is still something that I guesstimate less than 2% of students do. That’s talking to profs. Honestly most professors are there to help you. A lot of the time they’re lecturing on material that they do their research in, so it’s stuff they’re actually passionate about and LOVE to talk about. If you take a little bit of time to talk to the professor after class or during office hours, most of them would love to talk to you, and you get a free tutoring session. Talk about a win-win. Plus (we’ll get into this in a second), building a relationship with your professor is great for getting in on research opportunities and a reference letter down the road.

Of course, don’t forget to spend time making friends and hanging out with them too. This is also a really important part of university.

OK. So. As you get into your second semester of your first year, or when you’ve gotten a bit more comfortable with studying, start to think about extracurricular activities. Start going to clubs fairs, check out your university’s student union and talk with friends to figure out what kind of organizations your university has. Go to a few events, meetings, practices, whatever. See how you like it. Once you’ve narrowed your options down to a handful of things, there are two criteria to choosing the optimal extracurricular activity.

1. Do I like the thing?

Actually liking the thing really increases your chances that you’re going to stick with it for the next couple of years. This is super important because A. you’ll be having a good time instead of suffering through something you don’t like, plus you’ll get to meet like minded people who you share a passion with and B. long-term commitment to an activity look really really good on an application, so you want to make sure you stick to things as long as you can.

2. How much can I achieve with the thing?

High level, concrete results and achievements also look really really good on an application, so you want to pick an activity that will actually go somewhere. In the ideal world, it’d be fantastic if we could do extracurriculars just for fun, but admissions committees don’t really care about how much fun you had. They want to know what you achieved. So, when choosing between clubs, figure out how much you could achieve within the next two or three years, and, all else being equal, pick the thing that you can go higher with.

Let’s look at a quick example. Let’s say I’m considering judo club and knitting club. I like both of these things, so they satisfy criteria number one. Let’s move on to criteria number two.

If I stick with judo for two or three years, there’s a good chance that I’ll get good enough to compete at provincial or national level championships. For knitting, on the other hand, I might be able to become club president or to organize events on campus. I need to consider which of these looks better on paper from the perspective of an admissions committee: national level championships, or knitting club president? Not to knock on knitting, but depending on what the culture of the school is you’re applying to, a high level sports achievement will likely look better.

tldr actionable items:

1. Get good at studying
2. Talk to profs - they are your friends
3. Start some extracurriculars: make sure they are activities you actually like and activities that you can achieve something with

Let me know if this was helpful, and what you'd like to talk about next!

See you next week,

Jin