For College Freshmen: Adjusting Well and Making the Most of your First Year
Congratulations!
You’re headed off soon to start your first year of college. You may have heard the well-wishes from friends and family that college is going to be the “best years of your life!” We want to make that a reality for you. Making the most of college involves setting your expectations appropriately and having coping skills at the ready so you can tackle college adjustment in 3 key areas: relationships, school, and your health.
Relationships: Finding Your People
Making friends tends to be one of the biggest worries of incoming freshmen, understandably so! Maybe you are going to a college where you don’t know anyone, or perhaps you’re looking to find some new connections at a school where you know many people from high school.
Either way, we’d like to offer this comforting, often overlooked point: the first people you meet in college are probably not going to be your best friends for life, and that is completely fine. There is enormous pressure, both spoken and unspoken, to immediately click with your roommate, bond with your orientation group, and walk away from the first week of school with a ready-made friend group. When that does not happen, it is easy to feel like you are already behind.
However, friendship researcher and Dartmouth professor Janice McCabe (2025) offers us some helpful advice on this topic. She suggests that the friendships we make at the beginning of college are mostly based on chance. Though we can feel pressure to lock in a set of friends quickly, she notes that these connections may not be the best fit for a long-term friendship.
What she recommends for making lasting, meaningful friendships is to look in the “secondary friendship markets.” These are areas that match your genuine interests where you’re more likely to find compatible friends:
Join an intramural league for a sport you liked in high school (Most of the time, you don’t actually have to be talented in this sport. We recommend bringing some team spirit and plentiful high-fives!).
Join a club for an interest you had in high school or you want to learn more about in college. Find something that speaks to you, like an a cappella group, the LGBTQ+ club, student government, a cultural heritage club, or a faith community.
Connect with your career. Try out a research lab in your major or join a career-focused group on campus. This can help you make friends with others who share a similar interest and will most likely be in your classes (these are often good study friends!).
Get an on-campus or off-campus job in an area you’re interested in. Some students receive the opportunity to use a work-study job to work closely on campus, often in a field they’re interested in. If off campus, see what jobs are nearby and of interest to you.
Importantly, look for opportunities for consistent interaction, as opposed to attending a one-off event. Repeated run-ins with potential friends help you move from waving acquaintances to forming real friendships.
A quick note on roommates: roommate conflict is inevitable and almost always manageable. If something is bothering you, try to say something early on, calmly, and directly as opposed to letting it fester. Having a friendly conversation about dividing up cleaning responsibilities is much easier than the one that happens after 3 months of building resentment over the overflowing trash.
School: Learning How You Work
The academic pace of college catches a lot of students off guard, not because the material is necessarily harder, but because the structure looks so different. Unlike the frequent homework and check-ins of high school, the only assignments you have in a college class may be 2 exams and a paper in an entire semester. This can sound like freedom until you realize that the rest of the work still needs to happen, just on your unstructured time!
It can feel challenging at first to set up your own structure. Start by setting consistent study times each week, keeping a calendar you actually look at, and getting to office hours or the tutoring center as soon as something in the lecture or readings stops making sense.
For our ADHD and neurodivergent folks: this transition can be an added challenge! This can feel like a double whammy: just as the academic intensity increases in college, supports like parents and teachers checking your homework go down (Fleming & McMahon, 2012). Knowing that this happens in advance can help us plan for it. Here are some supports that can help:
Keep access to your meds. If you take medication to manage your symptoms, set up the pharmacy where you’ll get your medication at school.
Use therapy to help. Options like CBT, mindfulness training, and programs like Organizational Skills Training show good evidence as helpful ADHD supports.
Set up external structures for yourself. Join a weekly study group, schedule a recurring appointment at the tutoring center, or make plans weekly to go to office hours to recreate some of those structures from high school.
Notice when screens become too much. If you’re having trouble with screen time, seek supports to help you manage leisure time versus study time.
For everyone, the unstructured time in college is an opportunity to figure out how you work best. Some people study better in the morning. Some need the library. Some do their best thinking at 10PM with headphones on. Use the first semester to notice what helps you focus, and then do what works.
Health: Taking Good Care of Yourself
For many of you, this will be the first time you are fully in charge of your health. Nobody is going to remind you to go to sleep, make sure you ate something real today, or notice that you have had a stubborn cough for two weeks. Taking good care of yourself can set you up well for a great first year.
Our #1 advice: Sleep 7-9 hours (not much more or less). Sleep matters more than almost anything else for your mood, your focus, and your ability to handle stress. So does eating healthy foods regularly, moving your body even a little, and going to the student health center when you are actually sick instead of just hoping it goes away.
Care for your mental health. Feeling anxious, low, or overwhelmed in the first few weeks of college is normal. If those feelings persist, deepen, or begin to interfere with your ability to function as the months go on, it’s time to get some help.
Here are some common signs to look out for:
trouble getting out of bed, getting to class, or getting off your screens (Netflix, TikTok, YouTube)
feeling anxious or stressed out most days
feeling down or having trouble having fun in your daily life
sleeping too much or too little. Take note if you’re regularly sleeping 12+ hours, or you’re getting under 7 hours most nights.
eating much more or much less than usual
Almost every college campus has counseling services, and they can be a great resource to get some help.
Caring for your mental health can be a part of your everyday. Making sure you’re taking good care of your body, staying connected to loved ones, and keeping your stress in check can be great ways to keep your spirits lifted.
We hope your freshman year is going to be the start of an incredible college experience! For more on navigating this transition, reach out to us to schedule a consultation.
References
Fleming, A. P., & McMahon, R. J. (2012). Developmental context and treatment principles for ADHD among college students. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 15(4), 303–329. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-012-0121-z
McCabe, J. M. (2025). Making, keeping, and losing friends: How campuses shape college students’ networks. University of Chicago Press.
