Making Cents Out Of College (part 2 of 2)

Avoiding Freshman Pitfalls

There are tons of freshman pitfalls that should be watched out for as you enter your first year of college. I am going to focus on the ones that are financial in nature.

The first, and possibly most well-known pitfall is the dreaded freshman fifteen. This refers to the average amount of weight that a freshman would gain that first year at college. Obviously, the reason that this happens is that the lifestyle for freshman changes dramatically when they go to school.

Start Exercising

If you are a normal exercise/gym person already, make sure to keep that up. It can make a huge difference in keeping your metabolism up and more importantly, keeping you balanced so that you do well in your courses that are so expensive.

Avoiding the extra meals is a huge factor as well that contributes to this. So try to skip that second, third, and forth dinner. Your wallet will thank you in the future trust me.

Everything is Plastic

College campuses are bombarded with credit card applications for students. Do not fall into the trap with the giant-sized bag of candy or the funky t-shirt and frisbee that they are handing out on the green. Shy away from that and try to stay off the plastic. It is likely that you barely have the money to make the minimum payments, so you should really avoid wanting to pay interest for four or five years on a pizza you ate as a freshman.

Keep Working

With any luck you’ve been working in High School and you’ve managed to save some money for college, but now that you are in college, you should work harder than ever to keep things going. It is extremely difficult for you to be able to imagine how much college is going to cost you later on. But if you can manage to pay down even a few thousand of your costs up front for school, it can dramatically reduce the amount of money you will owe later on.

Know your Programs

Another common freshman pitfall is the taking of extremely specialized courses in their “Major”. Clearly this is great for some people. But others as freshmen take “African Basket Weaving” because they want to be an African Studies Major and then change their mind when they are sophomores. Then they are stuck and that basket weaving class doesn’t really count for anything.

Learn to Double Dip

For most colleges, there are five ways courses can be counted:

Majors
Minors
Concentrations
General Education Requirements
Total Credits

Colleges generally require a student to fulfill a certain number of courses to graduate. They also require all of the general education requirements be fulfilled. Often this is in the form of a class, but for some schools, it can be using a placement test. Finally, you must usually have at least one major.

However, when I think of college, I find that it is often possible, if not easy, to double up if you are careful. This can allow you to graduate with multiple majors, concentrations, etc. The reason why this is important is that it makes you much more interesting to employers.

If a finance company needs a computer programmer, they are probably going to be more interested in the one with the double major in computer science and economics than the one with just computer science, provided that the candidates are similar in other aspects. Getting a great first and second job can be amazing for your career, so make sure that you really spend your time wisely in college so that your courses can be used even if you change majors.