Many colleges and universities offer courses in study skills for first semester students. When I started undergraduate, my school offered a “Campus Life 101″ class for credit that was a huge help with the study skills. The whole point is to make sure you don’t fail out your first semester because of little things like not knowing how to study for college.

Also, most schools have an academic resource or tutoring center that you can go to for free that will help you get started and give you help on any specific subjects you may be struggling with.

There are a few good books out there, but your best bet is to head to the bookstore and check them out for yourself to see which one you might like best. These two looked good to me:
* The Ultimate College Survival Guide by Worthington & Farrar
* The Everything Study Book; Everything you need to know to get great grades without spending all your time in the library by Steven Frank (good for basics)
* Study Skills: A Student’s Guide to Survival by Robert A. Carman (This one is a little dated, but still full of really good information.)

What gets a lot of students at first is time management rather than study skills. If you are a full time student, you day has very little built in structure, so you have to be careful to keep up with everything and prioritize. I thought I was ok on this when I finished undergraduate, but I really struggled to management my time my first semester of graduate school, where the work load went up exponentially.

Ask other students what works for them. Sometimes they have really good ideas, and often they have the advantage of knowing the specifics of that situation and professor. For me, I take good notes in class, keep up with the readings by doing a little each day, review once every week or so. For exams, I reread all of the assigned readings a couple of days before the test, and then on the day or evening before the test I type up all my notes and reorganize them. The big key to this strategy is to be at class everyday prepared, and to focus and participate in the class.

No matter how prepared you are, it still takes time to really figure out what works best for you. Everyone is different when it comes to study skills, so if the first thing you try doesn’t work, change things up.