From avoid the freshman 15 to finding the best parties on and around campus while keeping up your grades, a college survival guide covers all the questions high school seniors and undergraduates ponder. College isn't easy, but equipped with a guide filled with tips, tried and true ideas and advice even the most ill-prepared students can survive their college experiences. Creating a college survival guide isn't a simple task, in fact, it involves lots of research, including interviewing and surveying past and current students.
Instructions
1. Clearly define what college survival means. Make a list of your initial thoughts and then scour the Internet and library for articles and books written on the college experience. Jot important notes, ideas and findings in your notebook. Be sure to keep a list of all sources you use including the source title, author and date of publication.
2. Create an outline and list some major topics you discovered during your research. Some topics might include study skills, working in teams, staying safe at parties, making the transition from high school to college and creating a schedule. Once you have your list of major topics you'd like to include in the survival guide, jot some of the ideas you learned through your initial research. Then enlist three or four friends to help you gather information by doing interviews.
3. Select a couple of college campuses and high schools in your area to conduct interviews. You and your team should interview high school students (preferably seniors) and current college students. Ask high school students what questions they have about the college experience, which things they're most excited about and which aspects make them nervous. Ask current college students to tell you what their biggest struggles were when they came to college and how they learned to overcome them. Ask current college students if they have any friends who just graduated and ask them to pass you and your team's contact information along to them so they can contact you. You and your team should ask recent graduates to give you tips they'd pass along to incoming freshmen. Use your voice recorders and video recorders, if needed. Be sure to create a form that participants can sign saying they agreed to participate in your survey and that they are okay with being video recorded or voice recorded.
4. Sit down with your team and sort through your research. Go back to your initial outline and begin to fill in pertinent information you gathered. Use the information you gathered from books and on the Internet, in addition to the information you collected through your interviews. If you need additional information, you can also send participants surveys by e-mail. Create one using an online program, so that it automatically tabulates your results.
5. Use your notes and begin to write your college survival guide. Give it a creative title, create a table of contents and use images to enhance the content. Before you take your guide to your local print shop or upload it online, be sure to review it for errors.
6. Send your survey participants thank you notes along with a free copy of your college survival guide. You should also send a thank you note and copy of the book to your friends who helped you gather information. You should list them as contributors in the guide.
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