How to Prepare My Daughter to Take College Courses?
If your daughter is getting ready to go off to college and you want to make sure that she gets a jumpstart on her classes, there are a few basic steps you can take to make sure she is adequately prepared to be successful in her college career. Many of these success strategies can be used throughout her freshman year and beyond.
Instructions
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Contact professors to get syllabi. Most professors will use the same syllabi on an ongoing basis for most of their freshman-level courses. If you know what courses your daughter will be taking or at least have an idea what courses she will be required to take in the near future, you can have her take the initiative to contact the professors, in person if possible, and see if they are willing to give her a syllabus early so that she can begin to plan her course of study. The syllabus will contain important information pertaining to the course, such as the textbook to be used, any potential research papers that might be assigned, study guides, reading schedules and the like.
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Buy the textbooks early. Once you know which textbooks are going to be used, you can have your daughter begin to read them. Be sure to check the syllabus to see which chapters will be covered and when. Help your daughter put together a reading schedule in order to get as far ahead on the reading as possible. This will allow her more time to do other assignments like research papers and to study for exams. A good practice for making a reading schedule is to find out how many pages will need to be read and how long she will have to read them and simply divide up the remaining days or months in such a way that she will read a few pages each day. For instance, if she has 500 pages to read in a span of 100 days, she only needs to read five pages per day. This will help her concentrate fully on those five pages rather than trying to get through hundreds of pages at a time.
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Send her to the college to study. If your daughter is not yet enrolled in school or is simply waiting for the semester to start, you can have her go to the school and begin to find places where she can study. The library is an obvious choice, but student unions, classroom buildings and other campus locations may serve the purpose as well. Ideally she should establish three or four places that she likes to study so that she will have some variety and not get bored with the location. By having a definite place to study, your daughter can begin to practice studying for success.
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Start taking notes and doing additional research. As your daughter reads her textbook, make sure she is taking down notes and reviewing these later. Any terms or concepts she has any difficulty with should be researched so that these are clear by the time she actually starts the class.
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Encourage a well-rounded and healthy lifestyle. Success in college depends on more than just study tips. Someone who is generally healthy and exercises on a regular basis is more likely to have the energy and mental stamina to last the entire school year. Encourage her to eat a healthy diet, exercise daily and get plenty of rest. Most importantly, she should carry these habits into college with her so that she does not find herself overwhelmed by the college lifestyle and tempted to devote more time to campus parties than to her own studies.
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