How to prepare myself to grad life?

[flyinglion]

People began asking me when I will go to school after I made up my mind to accept an offer. But I have no idea about that... I still feel the grad school is so far away but actually it is in the near future!!! Begin to anxious about the future life.. how to prepare for grad school? Ang suggestions? Thanks!

[scigrad]

I wish I would have done the following:

Find out what classes I was taking

Find out what books the classes required

(Bought the books cheap on Amazon)

Read the books before class started

I, however, switched science majors (Mechanical Engineering to Materials Science), and felt like I was in over my head. A lot.

The other thing that will make you can do is to know the policy, practices, etc. of your school inside and out. Know exactly where you have to go to get your student ID, exactly the forms to fill out, etc. No one likes holding the new guy/girl's hand through all that crap, so if you can figure it out yourself it is in everyone's interest.

[flit]

One thing to be cautious of re: buying books ahead is that syllabi can change.... I bought all the books that were posted for my courses and then once we started classes, found out that several were no longer required. Wasn't a huge deal - many of them were still useful ... but if $$ is tight....

I also did a lot of reading - and then discovered that in some of our texts, only a very few sections were required.... that actually helped, rather than hurt though, really

Getting a jump on things can't hurt - and also, showing up for any orientation activities that are planned is a good idea, I think ....even when they are relatively lame/uninteresting... if nothing else, they give you an opportunity to meet people and start making connections

[teaganc]

I found a lot of the books I needed were available in the library, so I just emailed professors before classes began to get the syllabus, checked out the appropriate books, and spent breaks reading ahead. Occasionally I had to actually buy book (thank you, amazon.com) but I saved a ton of money by checking the library first. I also got a fair amount of books in e-book format, which was slightly cheaper, involved no shipping, and didn't take up space in my tiny apartment.