Immediately. Day 1. You want to know people in your classes and your major, (a) to know who to study with, (b) who has word (old tests), (c) building up a suite of people to work (or not work) with on group projects, and especially, senior seminar. These are not necessarily traditional "friends", sometimes, you end up with "professional best friends", and really, those are great - peers you can count on for study groups, advice, feedback, & sometimes they become real best friends. Start immediately.

STEM classes for sure, doesn't hurt with others. Try to find people smarter than you, and more importantly, serious about learning. If it warrants, make sure you meet regularly. Meeting in person is better, as opposed to Slack, Discord, or Zoom. There will probably be a student who will setup a Slack/Discord server for some of your classes. Join those always, but try to find people who want to work in person.

Every class will have a syllabus provided on the first day. The professor will go over it. Ask questions if you have any. Go home and read it very carefully. The syllabus is your contract. Make sure you understand that. There will be policies and criteria for everything. Make sure they are all in your brain or at your fingertips.

Keep track of every single important date for classes. The Syllabus tells you the penalties for lateness. Many times, they are a 0. If you don’t use a calendar, you must have a fool-proof system. I used a single sheet of paper for each class, tucked into the front of the notebook for each class. However you do it, you must do it meticulously. Organization always pays off. Use a small part of each day for organization (update calendar, put papers in order, etc).

To this day - it is a part of my work life. This is the best. When you end a session of working HW or studying, etc, stop to make notes on where you left off, what you are working on trying to figure out , just a few notes so that when you come back you know exactly where you left off. And, then, make that To Do list, based on the notes, what are the next steps? Time saver, for very little effort.

Probably every class you take (at least STEM classes) will have at least one TA (Teaching Assistant). They will have office hours when they are available. Use that resource. Go at least once a week. Have a few specific questions written down. Learn from them. And, they can give information about how the professors looks at problems, they way they think, little clues that can be useful, just be listening to them. If you have questions, write them down and take them to your study group and/or TA. Even if you feel you don’t need the TA, write a few questions down and go ask them.

Professors, in general have office hours, when you can go ask them questions. At GT, these may be very limited, or possibly not at all. If possible, visit at least every two weeks, and definitely early in week 2. Even if you don’t need help, just take a thought-out question to her/him about the material. You want them to know who you are (as long as you are far from obnoxious , seriously, always watch social cues and body language to get a read on things).

Don't ever miss class...unless you are seriously sick. If you feel bad, try to tough it out and attend class. Go to every TA session, study session, recitation session, studio. Go even if you think you know everything (you don't!).

Take notes in class. Always have paper/notebook for writing notes. Get it out before class begins. If your professor posts PP slides or other notes, print them and bring them to class and take notes on them as they go over them. Taking a course is like playing a game. The professor is in charge of the game, the rules, the parameters, etc. Climb inside their head. They are telling you what is most important. Listen carefully and take notes. They will often say things like, "Students often struggle with ...". That is a clue. Write it down. As soon as possible after class (soon!), rework the problems the professor worked in class. There is a reason they worked them. Many times they will be helpful for homework, or a variation of what is on a test.

1. A good understanding of all the material in all prerequisite courses.
2. Work ethic – This means lots of practice, experimentation, perseverance.
3. Intellectual maturity:
   • You know what you are supposed to know.
   • You know what you know and what you don’t know.
   If you can’t explain in words, and illustrate/solve on paper, with no outside resources a concept/topic/problem, then you don’t know it.
4. Analytical/logical/mathematical ability – You have a strong base in this - nurture it, strengthen it. This is really going to grow at GT from day 1. You'll learn to think like an engineer.
5. The ability to experiment to solve problems. Look at similar problems. Make the problem smaller and solve that. Then, consider how to grow the problem to the one you face. I can't emphasize how useful this is. This will take some practice.
6. Fall in love (or pick your favorite positive word) with the course - it is only 16 weeks! Don't spend time thinking and talking about how you hate a class. That is wasted time and counter-productive to you actually learning. A lot of life is just your frame of mind. If you frame it correctly, success comes more easily and with less mental strain. Do this for all courses - English, History, Economics, etc, not just STEM. You may have to remind yourself of this (and maybe regularly), but it will help!

You should do the following things regularly. Plan to spend at least 2 hours outside of class for each hour in class. Sometimes that won't be enough, so do what it takes.

1. Before class, read the text over the material that will be covered that day in class. That way, in class, you can solidify your learning as opposed to listening to a lecture that sounds like the adults in Charlie Brown. Even if you can only do 15 minutes, skim the material and get some of the key words in your head. The relevant pages are always posted somewhere (LMS, Syllabus, on the white board in class).
2. Attend class with notes printed and take hand written notes on them. There is strong statistical evidence that writing notes by hand increases the information you remember long-term.
3. Reread the portion of the text covered in class as soon as possible after class. Rework the problems worked in class. There is a reason the professor chose them.
4. Start work on homework the day it is assigned. Always! You may not know how to get started. Better to find that out immediately so you can seek help. Plan to finish homework at least the day before it is due. That won't always work out, but strive for it. Then, the day it is due, or the night before you can go back over it, to spot any errors you may have made, and that process is actually studying!
5. Take notes on the things you didn’t understand and then resolve them by: talking with professor, classmates, tutors, TA's, and/or independent study.
6. As you do the items above create an ongoing Knowledge Base (KB) (e.g. study guide). This should be a record of everything you need to know for the unit you are covering: definitions, examples, tricky problems/techniques. You should aim for this to be one page front and back, preferably only the front page. It is OK to just jot things down in a journal for this, but at some point you should condense it down to just one page, the essence expressed in your own language. When you have a long walk to class, etc; or a short time after/before a class, pull it out and go over it. Eventually, try to just say the things that are on it without reading, or maybe glance at and then say it out loud. You might find that as the unit goes on, you need to rewrite the KB, to reflect your better understanding of things - sometimes that will be add more nuance to handle sub-cases, other times it will be to shorten your description of a concept because you know it better.

As mentioned in Daily Activities, create a Knowledge Base for each test for each course. It contains the essentials of everything you must know. You should work on it regularly. It is a way of studying as you go along. For example, you've finished working on a homework, or a reading, take a few minutes to condense down what you need to know and jot that on your Knowledge Base. This is important - that is why I have repeated it.

Turn your phone off (OFF) when you are in class. Don't have it on your desk. Don't check it during class. If you have an hour between classes, study, review for the next class, etc. If you need a break, then 15 minutes on the phone, then study. Put your phone away (AWAY from you & OFF) when you are studying and doing homework. Stay focused on your work. The phone is the biggest time waster there is.

For this document, "homework" is assignments that will be turned in for a grade. "Suggested Problems" (Practice Problems, there may be other terms) are suggested for you to do, but not turned in.

1. Start on homework the day it is assigned (Yes, I'm repeating myself. This is important)
2. Regardless of whether the class has homework, there will usually be Suggested Problems. Treat these as homework (even if there is real homework). In other words, make sure you work them easily, through repetition. In either case, work all problems at least 3 times. Work them until you can almost (or maybe completely) do them in your head. That is when you know it. Suppose you get Suggested Problems after a lecture. Work them all as soon as possible after class - the next hour, after lunch, that night, whatever. Then, the next day, work them again!
3. Try to finish homework at least a day before it is due. Then, you can go back and review it, find mistakes, find clearer or better ways of doing them, and to learn from them (retention).
4. Most/all homework will be turned in on the LMS. Make sure you turn them in at least an hour (?) before the deadline in case there is a problem with the internet. If you turn in paper in class, triple check that you have it before you go to class. You may find it useful to make a copy of it if the professor doesn't turn them back in a timely manner.
5. If you get in a crunch, the deadline is approaching and it looks like you won't finish, make sure and turn something in. Turn nothing in and it is a 0, possibly you get points for incomplete work. In the hopefully off chance you are not going to fully complete an assignment, stop 1 hour before, and get a plan of how to package and summarize what you are submitting. Always submit.

This pertains especially to STEM courses: Look for patterns and document them in your Knowledge Base. If you look at the material for a test in calculus, there are probably only 5-7 different types of problems, and each type might have a variation or two. Think of learning the material as an algorithm (step-by-step procedure that leads to the correct solution). Structure your knowledge (in your head and on your Knowledge Base) as an algorithm:

    if problem_type_A:
        if variation_1:
            do ...
        elif variation_2:
            do ...
    elif problem_typeB:
        ...

This is a very effective technique.

Efficiency - time management, is a real key.

1. Use the time between classes to study, read, homework, etc. You can probably find an empty classroom or study room nearby.
2. Work before play, but if you do need a break, don't make it too long, or physically strenuous, if you have more work to do. I.e. 2 hours of soccer from 4-6 and you still need dinner and a lot of studying to do may be be too much. Learn how you work and refine it.
3. Make a plan for each day - and stick to it. Write it down and look at it to keep you on track. Find a day, maybe Sunday, where you spend 1/2 hour or so to plan the next week, looking not only at what is due, but also reading time, study time, working/reworking homework and suggested problems, exercise, down-time, meals, etc. Make a plan. I was able (in undergraduate) to very rarely work on school after 6 or 7 pm because I was efficient.
4. Figure out how you work best for particular courses. Some course, like computing, may take longer blocks of time, once you understand the assignment. Sometimes, it may be hard/tedious to read a text. If so, read for 20 minutes with no interruption (phone away, and take notes in margin of book). Then break for 10 minutes. Repeat. Figure out the time intervals that work for you.
5. Don't play the "I'll catch up on course X on the weekend! With a hard(er) course, when you do nothing during the week, when you sit down to work on this course "all day" on Saturday, you'll possibly run into a road block early and you won't be able to work all day. Thus, further behind.

If you have diligently done the items above, with intellectual maturity, you are mostly done. In that case, I suggest:

1. Reread the text (this will be at least the 3rd time you have read the text)
2. Look at homework problems, suggested problems, problems in the body of the text, problems professor worked. Just read through the solutions. Or rework a few trickier ones. Or, explain out loud how to solve them.
3. Run back through your knowlege base. Make sure every thing is memorized. Try to just state what is written there without looking at it.
4. Work old tests. Time your self.

I think that learning is the most important vs. making an A grade. However, it will be useful to keep the grades up as high as you can. A GPA of 3.0 will get you in the door of most jobs. A GPA of 3.25 is needed to keep the Zell Miller Scholarship. Sometimes that might involve some judgement. For example, really busting it to get an A in English, if it looks like an A in a math course is not feasible after a test or two. I believe if you do your best, doing the things above, you'll make A's and B's and that will be fine. The things I listed above probably seem daunting. But they are worth it. And you will grow into a system that works for you.