I've graduated from high school well over half a decade ago and did just one and a half years of college about 5 years ago. I was at a community college so it had a good deal of older people in it, so I felt like overall it was a much more respectful place where people either kept to themselves or actively looking to help others. The structure of the classes was a lot more freeform, as attendance wasn't nearly as compulsory as high school, but had more practical courses for the diploma that I was looking for than a lot of what high schools would have, and the courses themselves were far more comprehensive, making homework more of a must, but with not nearly as much as I remembered doing in high school. I know universities tend to not be too hands on or utilitarian in their courses, with some professors not even knowing their students names and insisting on nose-to-book action for the entirety of a course inside and outside of the classroom in order to pass memory-based tests that don't test practical knowledge. I see a massive contrast between both, and I feel a lot of the workload and responsibilities people deal with in college and university are an offloading of responsibility from the professors to some extent. As people spend more money on their classes, they'll be more desperate to perform well, at least thats what I was reminded by classmates and teachers.

What differences have you noticed or heard about in your experience?

Its been a long time for me.

I found high school and college to be very different.

In high school I had been with my friends for a long time. I had developed close friendships. We are still close to this day. Everybody knew I was different but they accepted it. I had no problems in high school. The only problem I had was when I got into a few fights. I was not the aggressor I was just defending myself. After that the bullies and bad guys left me alone. I was friends with a lot of people

Then I graduated and went to college. In college everybody was just trying to go to class. There really wasn't that much time for socializing, which was fine with me. I was not really social because my friends actually started the conversations when they first met me. I earned my first degree at this college.

Then I went to a Christian University that was when it was like a totally different world for me. Around this time it was discovered I had high functioning Autism. That explained why I had narrow interests and was shy until I got to know somebody. It also explained why I was sensitive to sound except for Thunder. Thunder is calming for me.

The Christian College students were expected to be very social. The college encouraged students to attend meetings, group sessions, join clubs, and participate in games. It was a different world because everybody was social. For an introvert like me it was just strange. If you were not social you were kind of seen as weird. Still, despite that I made a lot of friends at the Christian College.

Anyway that was the main differences for me.

I feel like college was a lot more leniant and laid back, with less people focusing on schoolwork than in high school. I see a lot of people say things the other way around where people in high school are the ones who still dealt with teenage stuff and being young before being an adult hits them.

But in reality, high school, especially towards the end was where people spent the most time with studying and schoolwork so that they could get into the college that they want to go to. But then once they're in college, that level of effort isn't required anymore.

It was also way easier to make friends in high school.

For me it was night and day. I was quite an insecure kid, but the one thing I would usually fall back on was being "naturally smart". In hindsight, it was not as much natural, as it was me spending time on things most kids didn't (being online developing my writing skills, debating and reasoning, practicing my English etc).

Regardless, it's something I grounded much of my identity in during my early years because it was the one thing I felt good at. Through early high school, I was a master procrastinator, and coasted through much of it while barely doing any work outside of class. Since I went to a school where studying was considered kind of uncool, even showing a little bit of interest was enough to make you stick out to many teachers. The final couple of years before university, I finally buckled down a little bit in terms of giving it some effort (largely because I had to). Overall however, I still prioritized other things like vizzed, offline friends and gaming. Nothing prepared me for the giant shift that was my first few semesters at university.

Truth is... I was a terrible student. I lacked basic time management and study skills, on account of being somewhat lazy and coming from a family background where those skills were severely lacking. No one had ever told me how to go about these things, because they assumed I just had it figured out. Which enabled me to be undisciplined and unsystematic. I didn't feel like I fit in with other people who came from more academic backgrounds and I was afraid to speak about the trouble I was having because I didn't want to admit weakness. Since I didn't seek any help, my first semesters ended up being a giant wake up call. First I was in denial about why I was getting average grades. That shifted to starting to doubt my self image and stressing myself out about it, to the point where I hit a wall and flunked out of several courses. It really did a number on my self esteem.

I picked myself up after that, and through some rocky experiences kept taking more courses until I found something I really enjoyed. I started to perform better, and regain some self confidence while also trying to improve myself in other aspects. A big thing for me was working out, as getting fit meant feeling accomplished at something I had always assumed I was naturally terrible at. After a while, this eventually pushed me to work on many of the skills I had never learned growing up. Along the way I've matured both as a person and a student.

Now I'm coming up on almost 5 years spent at university, and got one semester left before I graduate with a bachelors. I'm hoping to go on to graduate school after that. I've had to teach myself a lot of things in terms of time management, how to study more effectively, setting reasonable goals and being honest with myself and others. Even then I sometimes struggle, but I try to remember not to stress out too much about it.

I've learned not to put too much stock in being called "smart" anymore. Intelligence is such a loose concept, and many use it as a cover up for things that relate more to self discipline than natural aptitude. With the right tools and circumstances, anyone can get through university, that's my genuine belief.

So it has definitely been a period of self development for me. In fact, it recently inspired me to go into tutoring and helping kids like myself who struggle with developing the self confidence and skills that they need. It's funny how experiences like this can really shape your life trajectory. I came into university with entirely different intentions.

I've had a completely different college experience than my highschool life. Not only in the academics department, but also with my social life.

When I was in highschool, I was very involved. I played multiple sports, was in multiple clubs, and was always the one chatting up the teacher in class to get off topic. I was always hanging out with my friends in school and out of school. That isn't the same way I am in college. I never talk in class, I'm not involved in many clubs, and I only have a few friends that I hang out with occasionally.

My academics have remained relatively well, but I find it has been much harder to keep grades up and stay focused in college. In highschool all the teachers knew you and would make sure you were getting done what you needed. It is not at all the same in college, where a class of 500 kids are all on their own.

I've never been the best student studying wise, I tend to procrastinate horribly and try to get everything done at the very last minute, which has hurt me considerably more in college than in highschool. I've learned to be much better about it, but from time to time it still comes back to hurt me.

Honestly, in terms of difficulty, not much. I did very well in high school while doing minimal work, and I did very well in college while doing minimal work. Graduated with a double major and a 3.78 GPA from the top public school in New York while skipping classes, writing papers about books I never read, and spending basically no time studying. Granted, both of my majors were easy. I would not have been able to do that if I majored in Math or Chemistry or something like that.

College taught me that my high school was WAY too easy on me and didn't actually prepare me for s*** lol. I did pretty well as a student in high school - my mom is insistent I was top 5% of the class... I think it was a little lower than that but her memory is certainly better than mine. I did get some sort of extra award on my diploma, at least. And then comes college and I get completely destroyed my first semester. Forget "good studying habits" - I didn't even know HOW to study... I never needed to! So I completely fail my first math course, barely scrape by an engineering class, and dropped out of a physics course.

I think around junior year of college is when I finally got into the groove of things and stopped "struggling for air", for lack of a better term I guess. I learned how to more efficiently study, I was doing things that I had some basis of knowledge in and could apply it, and I had made friends where we could work on assignments together and make all of our lives easier. My senior year of college was marked with straight As I think, as compared to my freshman year where my grades look like I got shot halfway through the semester or something lol. Unfortunately my GPA is representative of my initial mistakes, and is something I'll just have to live with.

I can think of 2 really big differences for me.

First, you don't really know anyone but meeting people and becoming friends was easy. I did know a handful of people because I went to college in the same city I'm from so I did know some people but for the most part I was in classes with 100 people I didn't know at all. However, because that was the case for a lot of people it made it easier to just meet people and become friends and form new friend groups. That was definitely different from high school where most of the friend groups were pretty set in stone by high school and didn't change much.

Second was that people seemed to care more about the school work but the teachers/professors cared less about whether or not you were there. It was nice to be in classes with people who cared and wanted to learn as compared to a lot of high school students who didn't seem to care at all. However, I found that the teachers in high school cared if you missed class but the professors would just let you fail and didn't really care. If you were a good student and wanted to learn and understand then the professors were usually really good to you. If you missed classes or had issues handing in an assignment they quite often had no sympathy for you.