25 College Orientation Tips: What to Do in Your First Week to Build a Social Life That Lasts

Orientation week is the most underrated week of your entire college experience.

Not because of the official programming — most of that is forgettable. But because everyone is in the exact same situation simultaneously: new, a little nervous, and actively looking for connection. That window closes faster than you think.

This guide covers everything: what to do before you arrive, how to handle the social side, the academic setup most freshmen skip, roommate logistics, and what to keep doing after orientation ends.

Before you arrive: what to do in the week before orientation

1. Set up your student accounts before you get there

Your school will send login credentials for your student email, the learning management system (Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, or similar), the student portal for financial aid and billing, and the campus Wi-Fi. Set all of these up before you arrive. Students who walk into orientation having already done this spend zero time on logistics during the first week and can focus entirely on people.

2. Sign up for a campus event platform

Your campus has dozens of events happening during orientation week that are not on the official schedule. Club kickoffs, cultural org socials, Greek life info sessions, dorm floor meetups — they're all posted somewhere. Sign up on Eventreels with your .edu email before you arrive. It's domain-verified by university, so you'll see every event posted by verified students at your school the moment you land.

Find events at your school on Eventreels →

3. Pack what you actually need

The orientation packing list everyone forgets: a portable charger (you'll be walking all day), comfortable shoes you can wear for 8 hours, a reusable water bottle, your student ID (or instructions for where to pick it up), any prescription medications and a copy of your prescription, your insurance card, and a small amount of cash. Leave the decorative items and the entire extra suitcase for move-in day.

4. Message your roommate

If you've been assigned a roommate, message them before you arrive. Introduce yourself, coordinate on who's bringing the mini-fridge, and get a basic sense of their schedule. This one message makes move-in day dramatically less awkward and sets the tone for the whole year.

During orientation: the social side

5. Orientation is the only time approaching strangers is normal

Here's what most students miss: orientation is the only period in college when approaching a stranger is completely normal and socially expected. Every social norm that makes cold connection awkward in regular life is temporarily suspended.

After the first two weeks, friend groups begin to solidify. The natural excuse to talk to strangers ("we're all new here") disappears. The students who take full advantage of this window — who talk to more people, attend more events, say yes more often — disproportionately end up with stronger social lives for the next four years.

6. Treat optional orientation events like your job

Not just the mandatory ones — all of them. Dorm floor socials, club preview nights, Panhellenic information sessions, campus tours, affinity group meetups. Most students attend the required events and then return to their dorm to scroll.

The students who show up to optional events in week one are the ones most actively looking for connection. Go find them.

7. Leave your dorm door open

Your dorm is the highest-density social opportunity you'll ever have access to. Leaving your door open signals availability. It invites conversations. It sounds trivial. It consistently works. Do it whenever you're in your room in the first two weeks.

8. Eat meals with strangers

The dining hall in week one is a social experiment. Everyone is alone or in small groups, looking for people to sit with. Invite yourself to tables. Say "do you mind if I sit here?" People say yes almost universally. Conversations happen. Some of them turn into friendships.

9. Collect contacts and actually follow up

Exchange Instagram handles, phone numbers, whatever your generation uses. But the follow-up is what matters. Message the people you met with something concrete: "I'm heading to dinner at 7 — come?" or "There's a campus event Friday, you should come." A contact you don't follow up with is not a connection. It's a forgotten name.

10. Go to Greek life information events

Even if you're unsure about Greek life, attending rush information sessions and open social events during week one costs you nothing. It exposes you to a network of upperclassmen who know every event, organization, and social opportunity on campus. Use orientation week as information-gathering, not as a commitment. Formal rush typically happens a few weeks after orientation anyway.

11. Find the activities fair and actually sign up

Most campuses hold an activities or clubs fair during orientation week where every student organization sets up a table. Walk the entire fair. Sign up for the email list of every organization that interests you even slightly. You can always unsubscribe. You cannot recover the opportunity to discover them organically.

Limit yourself to committing seriously to 2-3 organizations — trying to be active in 8 clubs is how students burn out by October. But use the fair to discover your options.

12. Normalize the awkwardness

Every single person around you feels some version of what you feel: uncertain about who they are here, nervous about whether they'll make friends, unsure if they made the right choice. The students who seem confident in week one are performing confidence, not feeling it.

Knowing this doesn't make the awkwardness disappear, but it reframes it. You are not uniquely struggling. You are universally experiencing what orientation is.

During orientation: the academic setup

13. Meet with your academic advisor

Your academic advisor exists to help you navigate course requirements, prerequisites, and your degree plan. Meet with them during orientation week, even if you feel like you already know your plan. They will tell you things your course catalog does not. The students who skip this meeting are the ones who discover a missing prerequisite junior year.

14. Confirm your course schedule

Verify that every class you registered for is actually on your schedule, that there are no time conflicts, and that you understand where each class is located on campus. Walk to each building before your first day of classes. Showing up lost on the first day of class is avoidable.

15. Locate your campus resources

Find the following before your first class: the library and how to access it, the tutoring center or academic support office, the writing center, the health center, and the counseling center. You may not need any of these in week one. You will very likely need at least one of them before the semester ends. Knowing where they are removes the friction of asking for help when you actually need it.

16. Log into your financial aid and billing portal

Check that your financial aid is disbursed correctly, that you understand when tuition is due, and that your housing and meal plan charges are accurate. Financial issues during freshman year almost always trace back to something that could have been caught during orientation week. Check the portal. Fix anything that looks wrong before it becomes a problem.

17. Understand your college's add/drop policy

Most schools have a period early in the semester during which you can add or drop classes without academic or financial penalty. Know the exact deadline. It is more useful than you expect — it is not uncommon for freshmen to sit in one class during week one and realize it is absolutely wrong for them.

Roommate logistics

18. Have the conversation early

Within the first two days, have a direct conversation with your roommate about sleep schedules, having guests over, cleanliness standards, shared space, and noise levels. This conversation feels awkward when everything is still fine. It feels much more awkward after a conflict has already started.

19. Establish shared expectations, not assumptions

Do not assume your roommate knows that you study in silence, or that you prefer the lights off before 11pm. Say it. Ask about their preferences in return. The roommate conflicts that spiral into housing transfer requests almost always start with an assumption one person made that the other person never knew they were supposed to follow.

20. Give the relationship time before deciding it's wrong

Roommate compatibility in the first week is a poor predictor of how the year goes. Most people are off-schedule, stressed, and not yet themselves during orientation. Give the relationship 4-6 weeks before drawing conclusions. Some of the best college friendships started with a rocky first week.

Mental health and wellbeing

21. Homesickness is nearly universal

Even students who were desperate to leave home feel it. The fix is not to call home less — it is to fill your schedule so thoroughly that you don't have idle time for it to set in. Stay busy for the first two weeks. Connection with new people accelerates faster than most freshmen expect.

22. Know where the counseling center is before you need it

Locate the campus counseling or mental health center during orientation week. Find out whether appointments are available on short notice or whether there's a waitlist. This is not pessimism — it is preparation. College is a high-stress environment and the students who know how to access support use it more readily when they need it.

23. Sleep matters more than it seems

The social pressure during orientation week is to stay up late every night. Some of that is fine and valuable. But chronic sleep deprivation in the first week degrades your ability to retain names, make good social decisions, and show up as your actual self. Get at least a few nights of real sleep in week one.

After orientation ends: keeping the momentum

24. Treat your second month as seriously as your first week

The first real test is keeping momentum going after the structured orientation programming ends and normal life begins. Most students relax their social effort as soon as the official schedule disappears. The students who maintain the same energy into September and October are the ones who end freshman year with a full social life.

Stay on event platforms that show you what's happening each week. Keep saying yes to things even when it gets tiring. The students who thrive socially in college aren't the ones who had the best orientation week — they're the ones who kept showing up after it ended.

25. Don't commit too early

The pressure to make friends fast leads many freshmen to lock into the first group they find and stop exploring. Your friend group at the end of freshman year often looks nothing like your friend group after orientation. Stay open to new connections through at least the end of first semester.

The people you're supposed to find in college are not always the first people you meet there.

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• Host your campus event free on Eventreels →