We launched a photo contest at the beginning of the semester that challenged all our readers to send in a Welcome Week photo that said “I love being back at school.” While we expected a few good ones, we were in no way prepared for the awesomeness onslaught we got when we started looking through your photos on our Facebook wall. From slip and slides to ski shots, we were impressed with your Welcome Week spirit…and jealous of how much fun you are all clearly having.

And of course, the winner will be having a lot more fun when she goes home with $500 from lulus.com!

We chose our top five favorite entries (which was hard, let me tell you) and posted them here so YOU can vote on which one most says WELCOME WEEK. Because, honestly, we’re too busy looking through our own Welcome Week photo albums (insert nostalgia) to pick our favorite.

You have from now until noon ET on Monday, September 27th to cast your vote. Then we’ll close the polls, count the votes and announce the BIG WINNER on Twitter and Facebook (so start following us, fools). And then she’ll jump for joy and spend the next 10 hours poring over Lulus.com, figuring out how she’ll spend that $500!

P.S. If you’re one of the lucky finalists, be sure to promote your photo on Twitter and Facebook! $500 dollars worth of new clothes is at stake. This is no time for modesty!

Check out the finalists then scroll down to vote for your favorite below.

Read More »

It’s the start of a new school year and to honor that, we at CollegeCandy are bringing back our favorite series, “We’ve All Been There.” Every week, Lauren – University of Michigan will comment on the common experiences all college women share, like the dreaded move-in day, including some new ones thrown into the mix.

You’ve spent the last 3 nights enjoying the free booze freedom that Welcome Week allows, but as you wake up with the garbage can next to your bed – again – you realize it might be time to buckle down. Classes are looming ever closer and not only can your body not handle another 12-hour hangover, you’ve got a lot of stuff to prepare before those 18 credits take over your life.

So while your friends watch another SATC marathon/discuss what they’re going to wear to the night’s festivities, you grab your schedule and head out for something a little more….fun: school supplies shopping (!!).

Most people wouldn’t find this particular type of shopping exciting, but back-to-school shopping has been the highlight of your Augusts since you were 6 years old. The smell of fresh books, the feel of a new (medium point) pen as it runs across the pages of a fresh, crisp college-ruled notebook. The richness of a new, juicy highlighter. You can’t wait to get it all home and organized for the first day of classes. Read More »

Sure summer was great, but we’re secretly thrilled to be done with the sunburns, bikini body issues, and living at home.

We’re insanely excited to get this school year off to an awesome start — and we know you are too. There’s no other week in the school year filled with quite the same excitement, enthusiasm, and hangover headaches as Welcome Week.

So to celebrate your school spirit we’re kicking off this semester with a Welcome Week Photo Contest. Upload your best welcome week photos (the photos that scream “I’m SO excited to be back at school”) to our Facebook wall and be eligible to win a $500 gift certificate from Lulus.com.

You have until September 20th to post your photos (with a stellar caption), at which time we’ll choose the 5 that made us want to pack our bag and go back to college best. We’ll post those 5 on CollegeCandy on September 21st and leave it up to you, our fine readers, to vote for the best.

Whoever’s photo gets the most votes will take home $500 worth of fantabulous fashion from Lulus.com. We’ll announce the winner right here, so come back and claim your prize.

So what are you waiting for? Get offline and go make some photo magic!

So you’re going to college. You got your GPA up and your admissions essay down, you got in, and now you’re out! Happy times are here. Your final days are characterized by blasting Lil’ Wayne with the sunroof open and going to lunch with the people with whom you’ve spent the last four, eight, or even 12 years of your life in school. You’re pretty sad it’s over, but you know that your life isn’t about to end; in reality, it’s only the beginning.

But before you unpack those Yaffa blocks and stock up on the highlighters, allow me to dispel a few of the myths your older, wiser and drunker friends have told you about your freshman year. Is freshman year awesome? Hell to the yes. But there are some things you just gotta prepare for.

“You’re going to become best friends with your floor.”
Maybe. Or maybe not. Yes, while the people on your floor are going to be the first people you meet and become friendly with, don’t feel pressured to become best friends with them. The only thing you may have in common with these people is that you live on the same floor in the same dorm at the same school. They’re great for trips to the dining hall, party wandering in the first week of school, and swapping hangover stories on Sunday mornings, but don’t feel bad if that’s it. You might find yourself laughing a month or two into school saying, “OMG, I can’t believe I used to go to breakfast with her” if your neighbor becomes “that girl” at parties on campus. Your real friends in college will be eclectic, and while many people find them on their floor, many do not. Friendships are rooted in a sharing of values, not a sharing of a hall. You’re lucky if you find both in the same place.

“Your classes aren’t that hard.”
Kind of a lie. Senior year you don’t do any work at all, and it’s really hard to turn your brain back on and retrain yourself to read and understand 60+ pages of reading a night. This lie depends on the school you go to and the classes you take, but the way I experienced it and the way most of my friends experienced it is that your classes are kind of hard. Especially when you’re trying to decide on a Tuesday night between $1 pitchers of beer and making notecards. You need to do a lot of the learning on your own and if you’re not careful, it’s very easy to fall behind. You might have floated through high school, but college is an entirely different ball game. You’re going to have to retrain your study muscles for those college classes! Read More »

Who or what inspires your style? Many of us use cultural icons (like Frida Kahlo) or models (like Daisy Lowe) as style inspiration even though, most of the time, they are being dressed from head to toe by the best stylists.Which we don’t have. And sometimes it’s damn near impossible to work their Hollywood looks into our not-so-Hollywood lives. I’ve made it my mission to tap into the mind of a fashion stylist and show you how to take your style inspiration – whatever it may be – and make it more you!

Before school starts in a week and a half, I’ve decided to give myself some much needed chill time (cuz I’m a bro, apparently).  A.K.A. sleeping until around 2 p.m., catching up on T.V. I didn’t get a chance to watch over the summer and then showering after that stressful day before night time boozin.  What can I say, it’s a great Welcome Week and it’s even better when I can revisit some of my favorite shows from my childhood.  One of those shows I’ve been religiously watching is the ’90s cult-classic, Daria.

First of all, Daria Morgendorffer isn’t even real, but instead a monotone misanthropic animated character that represents the apathetic attitude of so many of her fans.  Including me. As much as Daria doesn’t want her style to “say anything,” it does.  It says, “What I’m wearing really doesn’t have any physical representation of my opinions or feelings about life because, at the end of the day, they’re just clothes.”

When looking at Daria’s style, her lack of makeup and those seriously sh*t-kicking boots, it has an almost feminist approach. At the same time, though, it is perfectly aligned with the biggest styles coming our way this fall: flirty skirts, military jackets and adorned boots. Read More »

[Everyone’s got a vice, a bad habit, something they know they need to change. Unfortunately, everyone also has a million excuses why they just can’t do it. Not anymore. Every month we will be following a different CollegeCandy writer as she takes on a personal challenge. This month we're following Ariel as she, GASP, quits Facebook. She made it through her first week, despiter her body shutting down (no, for real). She was fine during week numero dos, even feeling a sense of freedom. And now? Not so much.]

I have a confession to make.

Week 3 has been extremely rough. I was preparing to move back into my apartment and start my senior year of college, avoiding the dreaded g-word that happens at the end of the best four years of a person’s life. I wanted to know who was coming back when. Even more importantly, I wanted to know who would be throwing down the hardest during Syllabus week.

So I caved.

I convinced one of my friends at home to conveniently leave her page open on her laptop when I was over. (What a good friend, feeding my addiction.) I was like a drug-addict who had busted out of rehab after only 13 days. The Lindsay Lohan of Facebook if you will.

And it was a total let down. Read More »

It’s August, which means it’s almost that time of year: back to school. But unlike when we were younger and dreaded the first day, going back to college is exciting, enough to provoke countdowns on Facebook statuses (“Only 236 hours more days until I’m back at school!”), and overall giddiness. You can’t wait to pack up your rooms and your closets and get right back into the college atmosphere – crazy bar nights and frat parties, Wine-Down Wednesdays and Tequila Tuesdays, dorm room gossip sesh’s with your roommates, attempting to wake up for class, and making even more memories with your friends.

However, amidst all that excitement, there’s one gray cloud looming: you’ll be leaving your best friends from home behind.

No matter how much fun we have with our school best friends, it always sucks to leave behind your home BFFs – the girls and guys you grew up with, who know all about the times you made a fool of yourself in 9^th grade homeroom, and whom you can still go out with and have a good time. It especially sucks after a summer spent with them, when you’ve gotten used to seeing them on a daily basis, and you know that when school starts things will be different. Because let’s be honest: despite all of our best intentions to stay in touch with our BFFs during the academic year, it’s usually pretty tough. Between the parties and the actual work, it’s easy to start speaking only once a week or learning about one another’s lives through Newsfeed.

For those of you who are bummed about leaving behind your best girlfriends, don’t worry – you still have a few more weeks of summertime fun left, which means plenty of time to stock up on some serious BFF bonding sessions. So here is a list of things you should make time to do with your girls before you’re all back in school, back in the grind, and back to intermittent IMs. Read More »

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. We love a strong woman (unless she happens to be charging at us with her fists raised), so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like free birth control! ) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

From Stanford to Florida State there are certain traditions that hold true in college across the country - homecoming, welcome week craziness, wearing flip flops in the shower, and getting up close and personal with your toilet after way too many shots on Friday night. College drinking has been a hot button issue for a long time, and there’s always been the question of who should step up and be responsible for it. Some recent reports have said that schools aren’t doing enough to curb excessive drinking – but should it be up to the schools?

On one side, colleges do have a responsibility toward their students’ health and that should at least include doing their best to distribute information and make policies that help keep students from chugging down the booze until it’s stomach-pump time. Also since many colleges are a major epicenter for the towns they’re in, often the school’s policies spill over into the surrounding communities, which in turn helps to curb the bingeing overall. And whether it’s fair or not, colleges are the only ones who really have jurisdiction in these kind of situations since it’s not a legal issue, so it has to be up to the schools to try and keep students (at least reasonably, sorta) sober. Read More »

[Meet Margaret. She's a recent high school grad gearing up for her first year at Yale. We'll check in with her every week to see what she's doing, who she's Facebook stalkin', what she's packing, and what new college surprises she's tackling (or freaking out about) next. Oh, to be an incoming freshman again....]

Dorm shopping is kinda like going on a safari. Not just because there are waaaay too many sheet sets out there with zebra print on them (you guys, zebra print can be totally cute, but no doubt it also is reminiscent of Austin Powers’ sex pad which is kinda less than groovy…unless that’s what you’re into), but also because it is so overwhelming and exhilarating you kinda don’t know what to do with yourself.

I mean, with “I Heart College!” Bed, Bath & Beyond ads hitting your mailbox every week, it’s hard not to buy that cushioned toilet seat or $26 stainless steel trashcan. I just wanna look super fly come college time and every little thing counts, even a steel trash receptacle.

But from the mouth of a wise woman (my mom): “Darling, if you really want it we can get it. But don’t be stupid.” Real talk: We all want to walk into college with swagger, but a steel trash can probably will not accomplish that. Nor will a cushioned toilet seat, much as your ass (or face, after a long night at the frats) would beg to differ.

So fellow freshmen, unless you’re Emma Watson and have Harry Potter cash to blow, let’s consider what we really need before we get sucked into Target’s cute dorm deco displays: Read More »

Got some college questions? Unsure of a decision? Not sure how to balance school and fun? Just wanna chat it up with some really awesome chics? We’ve got the girls for you. Hit them up in the comments or shoot them an email with the subject “College Q&A”! They’ve got all the answers you need, no matter who you are.

Question:
I’m leaving for college in like 4 weeks and I’m so excited. (But that might be because my summer job is so boring haha.) I am living in a single next year and I couldn’t be happier. I didn’t want to live with someone random and my friends aren’t going to school with me so I went with a single instead.  Now that school is getting closer I’m getting worried that might have been a bad idea. Without a roommate how will I meet people? Was a single a bad idea? Not that I can change it….. Do you have any advice for meeting people?

Busy Bee:
First off, getting a single was not a bad idea. You will meet tons of people on your floor, through classes, and my favorite…by joining clubs! I can’t stress this enough. People are always concerned about having friends, but what they often forget is that 1) You will always be your own best friend, and 2) You gotta put yourself out there to have friends. One of my life philosophies is that what you put out into the world, you will receive back. If you want friends, then be charismatic. That’s all it takes – people are attracted to positive energy. Anyway, you’ll be fine – just don’t be shy. Start by friending someone who does have a roommate. That way, you’ll have automatic invite whenever a group of people go out. Just put yourself out there and most importantly, HAVE FUN! Read More »