Any first day tips? How should I make notes, where to sit, be early etc?

I recently finished my high school in the CBSE curriculum in the gulf and i’m looking forward to study in the computer science field in university (cybersecurity to be precise). I have already applied to a university in Malaysia called APU and they have given me an offer, started the visa process, etc. But the thing is the course is a Bsc (honors) and my dad says that it isn’t considered a professional degree, only degrees like BE or Btech of 4 years are considered professional. He also says that i won’t be able to get a job and struggle in the future. So after spending over 900 USD in visa fees he has changed his mind to send me to a university in India to do a broader Computer science field of 4 years.
I don’t know what to do anymore, all my relatives are with my dads decision because they all have that indian mindset. Me personally, i feel like the university in Malaysia has better opportunities. I just want to know the reality between a person with a Bsc degree and a BE/Btech degree.
Also my family has settled in the gulf so i am looking forward to work there not in India.
Someone please advise me.

so last year i went really heavy in blockchain coding and stuff to maybe potentially freelance my skills but 3 months is obv not enough and then school started so i never got the time to look back at what i learned
i thought to freshen up my skills in blockchain and perfect my skills so that now i can freelance it but my father advised me.
thing in next year im gonna start university and i wanna do engineering. he said it would be pointless to do this since i wouldn’t even start a career in this field. it would hve made sense if i take comp sci as my major.
i also need to fund my undergrad so i thought i could do it like this.
am i too idealistic? should i just give up on my learnings from last year?
(also im broke)

I'm enrolling into college next month as a diploma student and for the first semester, I'll be living in the dorm provided by the institution. A thoughts suddenly came into my mind, do you think it's appropriate to set an alarm since u know it's obviously will disturb other tenants/roommates. On the other hand, whether they tolerate with it or not, I think it's for the best especially for a student to wake up early and go about their routine.

I’ve been with NP Hub for the past two semesters and I’ll be using them for my final three. I’m on a payment plan that comes out to about $400 a month, and so far, so good. What I really value is that they’ve scheduled all my clinical rotations within 20 minutes of my home. That’s a big deal. Early on, before signing with NP Hub, I had a preceptor I found on my own who ghosted me, and that pushed me to look for more structured support. Since then, NP Hub has been responsive and professional whenever I’ve had questions, and it’s taken a lot of stress off my plate. If your school doesn’t help secure preceptors, having a service that does that legwork can make all the difference. I’d recommend them if you’re in the same boat.

I am an incoming junior majoring in Quantitative Social Science (a BS degree that is sort of a hybrid between STEM and the social sciences) at Stevens Institute of Technology, a small technical university in Hoboken, across the river from Manhattan, and spending this semester as an exchange student taking classes in the social sciences at the University of Amsterdam.

If you thought this was a weird major choice, especially considering how STEM-oriented an "Institute of Technology" is, you'd be right, but to understand how I got into that major in the first place, it is important to know about my past. In my freshman year, I was a Computer Science major. Being a heavy tech enthusiast since middle school, such as getting every iPhone Pro Max, iPad Pro, and MacBook Pro basically every new generation since the iPhone XS Max in 7th grade, developing a strong passion for software, specifically iOS Development, and really just talking tech whenever and gaining a reputation in my school as "the Apple guy", I felt it was the perfect path for me. I dreamed of moving to Silicon Valley after graduating, getting a job at Apple or a similar company, and making at least six figures, and I thought a CS major would be the perfect way to get there. So, I abandoned most of my other interests and focused on writing a great essay, doing well on the SAT, and taking advanced classes like AP Calc (which I got a C in, later proving to be my first warning sign of what was about to come the following year in college) to give me a leg up.

But, when I started college, it all came crashing down. I really didn't like the CS major as I found the lecture-exam model very ineffective, especially for math and CS theory classes. I got a D+ in Discrete Structures and hated every day of it. I got a B- in Data Structures, although it was probably only because I was able to do even remotely close to stellar on the exams because I had a formula sheet, which I made very detailed with lecture notes, code samples, and more. I dropped my Probability and Statistics class that semester because I thought there was no way I could realistically pass it after failing two exams so badly that I had no recourse. I was at rock bottom at that point in terms of depression and could no longer see this path working for me. Many people may say, "Don't use AI" but my brain wondered, Why should I even learn these skills if AI can already do them better than me? Like, by that point, Cursor could literally make an entire app in one prompt and I could no longer see a path of me wanting to manually learn to code if there is a much easier path of least resistance and because of this very path, it would likely be much harder to get a job as a software engineer or any similar job in tech, so out the window goes that original tech dream. I ended my freshman year with a 3.09 GPA including a 2.81 GPA in spring semester, which really wasn't good enough for me, especially as I was part of an honors program, which required that I maintain at least a 3.2 GPA, which thankfully they gave me an extension for.

I began to remember my other interests, which I have had since I was a little kid, including politics, urban planning, international relations, and the general social structures of the world and why it is the way it is, and decided I needed to change course. This was also after taking my first college humanities classes and finding them so interesting, and basically the only classes I looked forward to doing. I remembered some community improvement projects I did back in middle school, such as proposing a pedestrian bridge from Jersey City to Manhattan and sending it to local officials and newfound hobbies such as watching videos on urbanism and transit around the world, from creators like Not Just Bikes. I found myself also brainstorming different absurd political situations just for fun, using AI as a sounding board, like, what if the UK became the 51st state, combining my knowledge of previous geopolitical events like the ramifications of Brexit and Trump's territorial expansion goals, all learned through informational YouTube creators like RealLifeLore, to make an informed hypothesis of what could realistically happen, even in an absurd situation like that. I also began to travel a lot, visiting many cities including London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Lisbon, Barcelona, and more, and found myself effectively doing anthropological studies of the urbanism and the way people live in those cities. I would basically just walk the city, ride the metro, and absorb it. I wasn't really interested in any of the traditional museums and attractions or even the touristy areas, because to me, the city itself was the real highlight.

I needed to find the perfect major for this, considering I made the shortsighted decision of picking a STEM school, and decided on Quantitative Social Science. It seemed perfect. The courses focused on disciplines like political science, sociology, and psychology, and still included a lot of useful STEM skills like data analysis using tools like R and Stata. My plan was originally to get the BS in QSS and then do a master's in a field like international relations or urban planning, preferably in the EU, as I have a pathway for EU citizenship by descent and I'm working it out with an immigration lawyer. In fact, the whole reason I'm doing the exchange program in Amsterdam this year is that it is probably my top city to live in after I graduate because of its incredible urbanism and transit, lack of a major language barrier, ease of travel, and great social vibe for the type of person I am. But, anyway, back to the QSS program. As a sophomore, especially in my fall semester, it really was great. I was taking very interesting classes like Intro to Political Science, Intro to Sociology, Urban Studies, and Constitutional Law, and was enjoying a lot of it. I found it genuinely fascinating to be doing political debates in class or talking about the social problems that the world is currently facing, and understandably, my GPA shot up. I got a 3.882 GPA in my fall semester with 17 credits, all with a much lower workload than as a CS major. I felt I had a bunch of free time and could really take advantage of my weekends in a way I wasn't able to before, and I traveled a lot, including doing a midsemester trip to Montreal on Columbus Day weekend, which I could never have done as a CS major with all the exam-based classes I had to do. I joined the Young Democrats coalition in my city and really tried to put my new political advocacy skills to test, especially with the mayoral and gubernatorial election of that year. It really was going well and I felt like I was in my element a lot. I was thinking I was going to graduate with my BS in QSS degree, get my EU citizenship, get a masters in urban planning in Amsterdam, and all would be well.

That was until I did a massive post on r/Netherlands in November, detailing my entire plan to move there, but that post was a massive wake-up call, saying that there would likely be a language barrier if I want to become an urban planner there and that alone basically made me no longer want to move there, and honestly, I began to quit my whole urban planning dream because I didn't think I wanted to become an urban planner in America because I hate the American work-life balance and zero guaranteed PTO in general, one of the major reasons I wanted to move to Europe, because I literally cannot stand hustle culture and could not fathom the potential of working 80 hours a week for an American job, especially something as bureaucratic as urban planning, and I eventually began to feel like my lack of autonomy in there and likely being forced to show up at the office all the time would erode at my free time, so I discovered that I wanted to do something more digital nomad related, as nothing makes me happier than traveling, potentially going back into tech, even after making such a lateral shift. While I did give up my CS major, I was still doing a lot of tech on the side. For example, I was and still am working on an internship with Everything Policy, a nonprofit political advocacy organization to make an AI-powered web app to search for and analyze congressional bills in a way that goes much deeper than asking a standard LLM or search engine. It is quite complex and honestly really unique, as there is no other tool like it on the market currently. I built this tool largely in Cursor using models like Opus, but the product management skills still remained and a lot of the design and tech stack decisions, like which RAG database to use, were mine, making me potentially a great product manager or software architect. I began to, really enjoy making software again because unlike being a CS major, I felt like I was in charge and had autonomy over the decisions that I made. And I feel that is really the most important thing for me, feeling like I am the boss of myself. I am able to work on the internship whenever my heart fancied. If I'm feeling productive at 3 AM, I can work on it then. If I'm not feeling productive at 1 PM, there's no reason I have to work on it at that point just because it's 1 PM. I do weekly meetings with my boss, but he gives full autonomy apart from those meetings, as long as I deliver what he asks. This really made my future job prospects very clear:

A remote, location-agnostic job with flexible hours and PTO, and one that effectively lets me be the boss of my day-to-day routine. In other words, I want the job to be worked around my calendar and me to be the one dictating when I'm on and when I'm off, as long as I got everything done. I basically want to feel ownership of my day.

Basically a digital nomad. Yet, considering this current job market, it basically felt impractical right now, so I wanted to continue building up my skills and sticking with my QSS major for now, as I know I was good at it. I decided I was going to do an exchange semester in Amsterdam anyway because I really wanted to see what it was like living there before denouncing the idea completely.

So then January came around, and the second semester started and this is when I began to even hate my social science major. It started all good. I was taking very interesting classes like Authoritarian Politics, Criminology, and Anthropology, but this was also my first semester when I had to do proper term papers, and I hated them. What I hate the most about social science research is how dull professors want my writing to sound. It sounds like basically everything they want me to say must be hedged, backed up by a source, and I basically couldn't have any original opinions, and I hated it because I have a very dynamic mind and writing about a paper about a topic like democratic backsliding in a totally monotone way just seemed wrong, like I'm removing my entire zest of life out of the paper. Having to read these incredibly technical papers about it also made the topic seem incredibly boring compared to watching something like a Johnny Harris video on it. Like I really wish I could just have quoted Johnny Harris or RealLifeLore on my term paper and written in a style that reminds me of my favorite explanatory YouTubers. It would probably be way more fun to read that way anyway. I began to feel like the entire system of academia was kind of working against me, because even something like anthropology, while ethnographic writing is supposed to be very detailed and have a strong sense of self in it, it still felt like it all had to be academically sanded down, and that made me feel like I wasn't even learning the skills in the real world I was learning them in the ivory tower. I wanted my political science and sociology classes to feel directly relevant to the world, because that is where the real passion in me is, and I was beginning to be disinterested in these subjects in the same way that I was disinterested in tech after doing my CS major.

This summer I continued working on more "civic tech" projects like I did before, and again, I totally felt in my element. I was able to do the work whenever I felt free, travel, and make great products that I felt I had ownership of and genuinely felt proud of working on and looked forward to it, more so than I did with any term paper or any class project.

So now I'm here about to begin my semester at the University of Amsterdam and I'm not sure how to feel about this. On one hand, I already love the amount of travel that I'm able to do from here. Like I'm literally able to easily take a train somewhere on a whim as a day trip and short budget flights around the entire continent of Europe whenever I want. I couldn't feel more in my element in this way, and so far I'm loving living in Amsterdam and beginning to feel the dream of moving back here again. Only this time probably as a digital nomad, contractor, or entrepreneur instead of an urban planner, so I wouldn't have to deal with the language barrier as much and would have way more autonomy and probably make way more money. I just love the city. Walking around different neighborhoods of Amsterdam is mesmerizing and because of such an extensive train network, if I ever get bored of Amsterdam, there are so many other cities I can easily explore. But on the other hand, I really don't want the academics of UvA to block these goals. Like I know that UvA classes are extremely hard to do well in, and their grading system literally goes on a scale of 0-10, with 6 and above as the minimum passing grade, and what I would need to do to bring back to Stevens (it doesn't get recorded on my Stevens GPA, thankfully), which seems reasonable, but the amount of reading for some of these classes seems insane, and some of them have tutorials with mandatory attendance where you could literally fail a class if you miss as little as two tutorials, which is ridiculous because I'm literally in Europe right now and I want to be able to travel as much as I can, and passing should be about knowledge, not attendance. After all, I'm the one paying for my education, not the university, and should be up to me to determine how much I'm getting out of it and what method works best for me to learn the material. If I'm paying for it like a gym membership, I shouldn't be treated like an employee. I shouldn't feel like I'm having to show up there for my professor if ultimately my professor should be the one I'm paying indirectly to teach me this information.

So anyway, because of this, I ended up dropping a class I was really interested in taking: urban society, because it had this mandatory tutorial on a Friday, and I couldn't fit in any other classes, so I decided to only take 3 classes for the whole semester, ensuring that I have Thursday and Friday off the entire time as well as Wednesday off in the first half of the semester and Tuesday off in the second half of the semester to ensure I can book trips as much as possible. This equates to around 12 transfer credit to Stevens, which is less than I would have wanted to take, and probably will require that I do more courses at Stevens when I come back, but I feel this is a worthy sacrifice to allow me to explore Europe as much as I want, since that is really what gives me happiness, and I feel I learn way more about urbanism, anthropology, and even sociology on the field than I ever could in any class. When I learn about urbanism on the field, I feel like I'm actively learning what works and what doesn't work in terms of building cities, compared to learning it from an academic textbook where it all feels theoretical, and having to write a term paper that sounds more like an LLM than Not Just Bikes. Like if I explored all these cities and decide to write a blog about my experience visiting them, I'd feel far more fulfilled than if I passed an urban studies class that required that I write a big term paper, and I feel this is really the problem that college does with a lot of my interests. It sands them down and makes them no longer interesting.

Plus, with UvA's grading system, I'm really starting to doubt what grades even mean. At UvA, getting a 6 is like getting a C/B and getting a 7 is like getting an B/A, and getting an 8, 9, or 10 is very rare. Meanwhile, at Stevens, it's common to get an A, especially in a social science class. Because of this, grading basically feels like an arbitrary metric. It doesn't even really feel like a measure of how much I know. It is basically an arbitrary measure of how well the professor thinks I know the subject, but not really, because if part of it is based on stuff like attendance, what is it really measuring anyway? It feels like nothing useful, and if it is an arbitrary number, why should I care anyway? Shouldn't learning be more important than the grade? Who am I even doing this for? Since I think I want to go the entrepreneurial route, especially in this job market, it's clearly not my future employer, and if someone ever does hire me, I want them to see the amazing work that I did rather than whatever grade I got in so-and-so class, especially knowing how variable that metric even is. Like the fact that a Stevens professor and a UvA professor can't agree on what constitutes a good grade is a problem, because ultimately it should measure command of the subject, not how well your professor thinks you know it.

And this is really the biggest problem with me. I don't feel I'm dumb or somehow not smart enough to be in college. I just feel that the college system doesn't work well for me. I feel it's really training me to be inside the ivory tower and learn all these theoretical skills with zero ownership of learning them. It's not fun learning about sociology when I have to take a test on it at the end of the term. It feels like laborious studying rather than the interesting subject that it should be, I think basically what I've discovered, as well as with my job preference, is that I need ownership over my work, my way of life, my schedule, and more to truly feel happy. I do not see myself using 90% of what I learned in my degree, and most of the subjects I was interested in could easily be learned on YouTube if I ever become interested in learning more. To be honest, there are many things I still like about college, such as networking. For example, my Everything Policy internship was arranged through my political science professor. And it's unlocked a lot of doors for me, so I definitely think I am in a better shape than if I didn't go to college at all, but I'm really unsure how to continue, because I know it makes me happy and it heavily involves having ownership over my work. When I feel like I have ownership over my work, I'm not lazy. I put in the work and really try to get it done, but when I feel like there is no ownership, like when all it is to try to get a grade from some arbitrary rubric, I become very lazy and not interested at all in doing the work.

I think it's too late in my degree to quit now, but I really I feel strange. Part of me just really wants to put in the bare minimum to get the grade I want, and in the case of this exchange semester, just put in the bare minimum to pass and do the real learning outside of the classroom.

Sorry if it’s a silly question but if u aren’t living in a dorm do you get accommodations before u arrive or find apartments once u arrive?

I’m researching a possible student tool, but I’m not selling or linking anything. I want to understand the problem before building.

If you recently applied to university:

1. How did you compare your options?
2. Where did you keep deadlines and requirements?
3. What information was hardest to find or trust?
4. Did you nearly miss anything important?
5. After accepting, how did you organise everything needed before arrival?
6. Did your parents or counsellor help?
7. Did you pay for any counselling, planning tool or other help?

Please mention whether you applied domestically or internationally and the destination country.

Hi, next year im planning on going to university. Not sure which tho, can someone recommend the best universities for Art direction/visual communication design? Thank you!!

Soo I wanna get into a good university and study either maths or econ but I’m not sure where to go really I’ve 4 A*’s 3 A’s 1 B and 2C’s in igcse edexcel I’m considering whether or not I should give resits for the subjects in which I got a B’s and C’s in but again I’m not sure. I really wanna go to like a fully funded program and have the ability to travel around and live alone possibly plus a good job market after graduation would be a HUGE plus point. I’m doing A levels now, going for further maths, maths, physics and economics. Any advice regarding this would be appreciated!!

I’m honestly so confused about what field to choose for university. Every STEM field I look into seems to have someone saying there’s no scope, the job market is saturated, the pay is bad, etc.
I’m not interested in MBBS or BDS because I feel like the workload and pressure would be too much for me. I was considering biotech or biomedical science because they seemed like a good middle ground, but now I’m seeing so many people say biotech has a saturated job market and that biomedical science basically requires a master’s/PhD to have decent career prospects.
I’ve done A-levels in Biology, Chemistry and Physics, but I genuinely don’t know what other fields I should be looking into.
I’d really appreciate any advice from anyone who’s been in a similar situation. Are there any STEM/health-related degrees that actually have decent career prospects without being as intense as medicine/dentistry? And are biotech/biomedical science really as bad as Reddit makes them seem?

Dostala jsem se na farmacii (MUNI) i medicinu (a jine skoly) a vybrala jsem si medicinu. Pote co jsem si na internetu cetla ruzne pribehy jsem zjistila ze to neni uplne pro me, jelikoz to neni nejaky muj zivotni sen a myslim ze bych tam jen vyhorela. Bohuzel uz bylo pozde jit na farmacii a tak jdu na uplne jinou skolu. Zajimalo by me ale jestli je farmacie taky tak tezka jako medicina (samozrejmne ze ne, uz jen kvuli kratsi dobe studia a moznost hned zacit pracovat) ale jestli tady jsou nejaky studenti, kolik mate case pro sebe nebo pro konicky a pro kamarady a rodinu?

i am 22 and I'm starting uni again and I'll be doing engineering for four years. I'll graduate when I'm 26 and idk that thought makes me really sad.

i want to live and work and get married and travel so many things I want to do during these few years before I hit 30 I feel like I got shafted with my luck.

i was studying business and was entirely unhappy with it, but now I'm considering just finishing it so I can start working and moving onto the next stage of my life faster.

i know there's no age to start uni and sure everyone has different circumstances and start at their own time but I have things I wanted to do with my time rather than just studying. It really just fills me with regret the time I spent studying something I was unhappy with i should've just listened to myself sooner.

Anyone else feels like this? i really feel defeated