Don't fall behind. You have a lot more freedom (not to attend classes, etc.). Also, remember, most class grades are based solely on the final exam. It's easy to say "I'll do it tomorrow". DON'T!!!!
I agree with the bottom line of this, but one nitpick; Classes where the whole grade is based on one exam are rare to nonexistent in the US (lots of European schools still do this, I understand). Many schools have policies were profs are not allowed to have any one assessment count for more than 30 or 35% of the grade. That way a good student doesn't flunk over having one bad day. But this fact reinforces bulldog's advice; don't think you can slack through a term and then pull off a great grade by somehow acing the exam. Consistency counts.
Some notes about partying: Don't assume that you can get away with it, just because others seem to be doing it and still getting through their studies. That's misleading because: 1) Some of those kids have jobs waiting for them when they graduate, thanks to family. 2) Many of those kids are in fluff majors. I taught 3rd year engineering for one semester at a Big Ten university. My students were serious. I also taught a couple sections of freshman at the same time.
I believe there was a study done of the much-ballyhooed campus "hookup culture" which concluded that most of the students involved were legacy students from well-off families. For them college was, at most, a rite of passage where they partied away until stepping into the cushy job sugar daddy had waiting for them. First-generation students and those from less wealthy backgrounds turn out to be relatively sensible, get good grades and limit their partying.
Now for my opinion as an old fart: A large state university is an elite college hidden within a giant party school. The elite college is like a source of wealth (intellectual, career, etc.) that you can stuff your pockets with, but you have to seek it out and grab it. Sometimes it means being a PITA, such as banging on your department or the registrar's office to get you into a course section that you need in order to stay on track. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The things you can look for and dig up are: The meaty majors, the hard courses (within your limits, don't overload yourself first semester), research projects that you can join, etc.
This is an excellent point. We're very used to "ranking" schools. Those rankings aren't totally meaningless, but they shouldn't be taken too seriously. The way faculty hiring works, is that in every year's job market there might be two or three dozen positions opening up in your particular specialization across the country; and departments hire for the best "fit" to their particular needs, not on any absolute objective scale of "quality." And you may well have over a hundred candidates, mostly new-minted PhDs, applying for those couple dozen jobs, so schools really get their pick of the best, even lower-ranked schools. What that means is that the guy who gets the state university job is not necessarily any less of a teacher or scholar than the guy who gets the Ivy League job; it's just that the Ivy League school thought that guy was a better "fit" for reasons of their own. The state university faculty are every bit as good, especially when it comes to teaching, as the "elite" school faculty.
Where you get more of a difference is the student body. Higher-ranked schools will generally have a more ambitious student body, because they were harder to get into. That creates a different culture. Nevertheless, you have low-achieving students and high-achieving students in any school. I've taught at Southern New Hampshire University (you may have seen the TV ads for their massive online programs), which was the worst school I've been associated with. I had students admit to me they barely managed to graduate high school, and there they were in college (and those not the worst students I had). Even there, though, I had some
great students. Ambitious, smart, hard-working - could have succeeded in an Ivy League if they'd had the opportunity. There just weren't very
many of them. Using the same grading standards, at Notre Dame (which tends to come in around #20, give or take, in the rankings), I found about a third of students earning As, a third Bs, and a third Cs, and an F was almost unheard of. At the University of New Hampshire (around #100, give or take), it's maybe 20% As, 40% or so Bs, 30% Cs, and you get a handful of Fs each term. SNHU was maybe 10% As, 20% Bs, 50% Cs, and 10-20% Fs (these are approximate, I know the numbers don't add up exactly).
What that means for students is this; if you're an ambitious person who wants to learn a lot and get the most out of your education, an important piece of that is going to be building a circle of like-minded ambitious student friends. At an elite school that's pretty easy to find. At more regular school, you have to hunt a bit harder to find classmates who are like that. But they're there. And again, the faculty are a major asset if you USE them, beyond just attending classes.
