A Student's Guide to Your First Year of College

Students are in good hands with this YouTube series that walks them gently through leaving home and thriving at college. Michelle Obama, whose advice is mostly culled from a long talk she gave an audience of students that's excerpted throughout the episodes, proves to be a terrifically empathetic knowledge-dropper, who obviously remembers her own college days well. "When my dad dropped me off at college," she says in voice-over as photos of her as a grade schooler and then a graduate fill the screen, "I was excited, but I was also scared and overwhelmed." Sounds about right.

Along with Michelle Obama's advice, other experts offer their take on college's finer points: the difference between what tuition costs vs. how much it costs to actually support yourself while going to school, what things parents might have done for students that students will now find themselves doing alone (waking up in the morning and laundry figures largely into discussion). Throughout A Student's Guide to Your First Year of College, students are assured that they can do it: "These spots are coveted," Ms. Obama says about students who are accepted to college. "They didn't make a mistake."