The courses that came as the biggest surprise to me in my first year were Calc 2, Mechanics, Calc 3 and my gen eds actually. I was surprised by how unforgiving and quickly classes went. One messed up test can ruin your grade. But I was also surprised that the content was not necessarily harder than high school ap courses. They were just taught with less time and there were less opportunities to fix or pad your grade. In my high school there were quiz retakes, and if you scored badly on a test there were often projects and hw thats would raise your grade. In many technical classes this is not the case and getting an a is much harder than it was in high school. My strategies to do well were to do everything a teacher suggested. Teachers often assign practice problems and tests and the best way to do well is to do everything they give you in preparation for the test. Sometimes a question on the test was exactly one we had seen before. Another thing is that gen eds are not free A's. They are generally easy. But it is very easy to get an a- in a gen ed if you treat it as an afterthought which can be frustrating.
I actually have not done much of this during my first year but I wish I had. I think going to office hours, participating in class and reaching out for potential research opportunities are the main things I will try next semester.
University is very hard and fast paced. Although it is completely doable it causes a lot of stress that I was not used to. I took 17 credits my first semester and took pretty difficult courses and was extremely stressed. Meeting other students in my major to work and study with helped me a lot both for my motivation as they kept me going and my grades as they were able to explain things in a way that I could better understand compared to lectures or textbooks often, and I could help them in the same way with topics I understood better. Meeting students outside of my major was also very beneficial for me as a lot of engineering students including myself were very similar and it was nice to meet different people. College is about experimenting and meeting people in different fields and who have different interests is very rewarding.
I came from Montgomery county, and my school at least had no final exams. I was unprepared for cumulative tests as I never really had them outside of AP exams. I would recommend not cramming right before a test although I have done mostly that myself. I want to really understand the content as it can bite you later in final preparation if you never understood the content and just memorized the night before. There are an insane amount of equations and formulas you need to remember for certain classes and understanding a question helps a ton. I was also unprepared for lower grades than I was used to in high school. I learned that it is unrealistic to expect all a’s in college. Class averages on tests are rarely higher than 80 percent for difficult and even medium difficulty classes. And even if you try your best you could end up with a grade you are not happy with. Passing in a lot of your hard classes is something to be happy with in itself and trying your best is good enough. And during final prep if you have tried throughout the class, you will realize you have learned a lot and grown no matter the grade you end with.