I'm sure the majority of you out there use Facebook. Perhaps you don't use it as fiendishly as USC football coach Pete Carroll (I'm not kidding, he has a legitimate Facebook profile), but most of you sign on now and then, or will sign on in the future.

Back when students owned Facebook and it wasn't cluttered with applications, advertisements and 80-year-old thrill seekers, there was an official "courses" feature operated by Facebook. We could find our classes and add them to a schedule that would be displayed on our profile, we could see which classes friends were taking and we could easily form study groups by looking through our class rosters.

The best part about it was everyone used it – so the class rosters were actually complete and the feature was useful.

So what happened to it? Well, in short, Facebook got rid of it, saying developers could make something better in the form of an application. In my opinion, Facebook just got lazy and wanted to focus on making money rather than on students' experience. But hey, I can't really blame them.

Lucky for us, Cramster has developed its own application – Courses 2.0 – that does everything Facebook's old courses did plus a whole lot more. One exciting feature coming soon is the ability to form an online study group without leaving Facebook.

But as you know, the app can't be at its best unless a ton of students hop on board. That's where you come in.

We've created a group called Courses 2.0 – Facebook courses the way it should be in hopes that it can spread the word and make Courses 2.0 the universal courses application just like we used to have.

C'mon – you know having a universal courses app once again would be pretty awesome.

For most high school seniors, it's that time of year – the time when funny hats are thrown into the air to signal the end of sheltered bubbles and parental control, and the beginning of the path to expanded horizons.

But if you were like me, the standard graduation song that everyone hears takes a back seat to your soon-to-be fight song that makes you distinct.

Before you can step foot onto the college campus of your choice, however, you must spend three months in educational limbo. Sure, you'll be working, possibly taking a summer class or two and enjoying your weekends (be careful, kids), but through it all, college will always be on your mind.

Courses, professors, new cities, roommates, classmates, parties, freedom and unlimited cafeteria buffets – no one can blame you for drowning in possibilities.

So how can you strike a healthy balance? Here are five tips to help you get pumped and prepared but keep you away from classic pre-freshman mistakes.

1. Read up on some school history – Let me paint the scene: You're at the first home football game and the band strikes a chord that sends most people around you into song, but you have no idea what's going on. Naturally, you clap and bounce around a little, hoping your awkward smile doesn't catch on and that the song will be over before your giddy friend sticks a fake microphone in your face. Don't let this happen to you. Know the songs, know the recent sports history, know about the traditions – orientation will help, but most of the time you'll be bogged down with registrations and info sessions. Doing some history legwork during the summer will make you a natural fit.

2. Make Facebook your friend, not your lifeline – Back in the day when I was a college freshman (2005… c'mon guys), Facebook was just a baby. Still, there were people who made fools of themselves before they ever spoke with one of their classmates in person; and Facebook was the culprit. Friending a few future classmates, joining a few groups and sending a few messages or wall posts back in forth is a great idea – it will help you out socially in the early going. On the other hand, having 1,000 friends, owning all 10 recent wall posts on a cute boy or girl's wall and being a proud member of 132 groups – some of which are inside jokes among the senior class – is a terrible idea. After being told, "Oh, you're the dude I saw on Facebook!" for the 20th time, you'll understand why.

3. Scope out the area surrounding campus – I'm sure your college will have a multitude of events for the incoming freshmen during the first few weeks of school that will keep you on campus. But once the on-campus buzz dies down, you'll serve yourself well by finding the cool spots to eat or catch a movie off campus. Telling a group of your new buddies, "Hey, I heard about this great Italian place down the road," right before you were all about to hit the cafeteria for the 14th day in a row will make you a demigod in their eyes.

4. Put some money in your pockets – About those great off-campus locales… you probably can't go there unless you have a few bucks to spend. If you don't have a job locked down yet, even if it only pays minimum wage, find one! Gas prices aren't getting any lower and pizza by the slice can only be so cheap. Remember when movies were six bucks? Scouts honor, it wasn't that long ago.  

5. Set yourself up to succeed with Courses 2.0 and Cramster – All right, I'll admit this step might be a few months away, but I promise it's just as worthwhile. College courses are more difficult than high school courses – you knew that already – but there are also more educational tools at your disposal. Signing up for a free membership to Cramster.com is a natural step for math, science and engineering majors, but for those who don't know, Cramster will be testing our new subjects like economics and business in the near future. And going back to Facebook, Courses 2.0 is the perfect application to connect with new classmates. Let friends know which classes you are taking and check out who will be joining you in those classes – it's like the day your elementary school released teachers and class listings, but way more fun. And when the time comes to actually start studying, Courses 2.0 can help you find the right study partners.

Did I leave anything out? What are you doing to prepare for "the best four years of your life?" 

Wrong.

For a select group of people, there is the dreaded summer school. What? School? During summer? Oh, yes.

Some people go to summer school to get more units (be ahead of the curve when it's time to register and all that). Other people go because, well, let's be honest, those few classes they missed ended up hurting their grade more than they thought.

So how do you save your summer from summer school? Lucky for you, we're here to help. Here are 5 fail-safe ways to enjoy your summer even if you are in school:

1. Give yourself a break. In other words, take some time off between spring and summer semester.  I repeat: Do. Nothing. Why prepare for summer school? It is still SUMMERtime after all. Sleep in. Watch TV the entire day. Sit on the couch and eat junk food. Believe me, you'll value the time you took off to relax once class starts and you're back to memorizing stuff you'll forget the next week.

2. Go on weekend trips. So you can't spend an entire month in Europe like some of your friends. Oh, well. That's the price you pay for being the good student. But you can still have some envy-inspiring times by going away on the weekends. Go to Palm Springs or San Diego. New York City, Boston or DC. If you're really ambitious, drive across the border and have a fiesta in Mexico. So your friends are being bums. Who cares? You can salsa, baby.  No matter where you live, take some time to get away from school. Remember, you'll have to spend the next nine months there, too.

3. Do not take an 8:00 a.m. summer school class. Cut yourself some slack, it is summer after all. Maybe start at 10 a.m. instead. I don't know about you, but I can barely get up for 8:30 classes during the school year (in fact, 10 is still pushing it).  How can you feel like it's summer if you are getting up at 7:30 to sit in a lecture hall? Take at least a little time to rest up for the school year to come.

4. Use Cramster to help you with your studying. It's hard to stay motivated when the sun is still out at 7 p.m. and your friends are off to the movies, but you'll be happy that you did. And when your friends can't help you with that nasty calc problem because they're off to the pool, maybe some of your Cramster buddies will help you out.

5. Make friends in your classes. That way, you have people with whom you can complain about having class on a hot summer day and people to help you study for your tests. Maybe you can even do a study day at the beach together (because we all actually study when we do that…).

What are some ideas you have on how to maximize your summer experience while still benefiting from summer school?

I took my last final Tuesday.

That sentence should be an added definition under the word "freedom," don't you think?

So with summer facing me (and I hope most of you) in the face, I've been learning more about my friend's plans for the next few months.

For the most part, you can divide those plans into two categories: Internships and trips. As a business major, I wish I could consider the latter category, but typically that is saved for those pre-med folk and other students who have many more years of school ahead of them.

As for the internships, I've heard many-a-cool destination: New York Knicks front office, NBC Nightly News, Bain consulting, Barclay's in London.

As for the trips, well, they are all cool. You can Euro trip, road trip or ego trip.

Yeah, the last one isn't so cool. Snoop Dogg's PR firm made me do it.

I've had some great summer experiences throughout the years – I highly recommend Malta in June, beach soccer in Sicily and a gig at Cramster.com, of course.

But I'm sure all of you can come up with better stuff than I can about summer plans you've made or other plans you've heard about through your friends and family.

Let the good times roll.

What are the coolest plans you've heard about for this summer? Are they yours or someone else's?

Some students go to great – and often curious – lengths to maximize their studying time before finals.

As I approach the end of my third year in college and thus my sixth round of finals, I'm confident I've seen it all when it comes to crazy, odd or just plain absurd study methods.

Well, almost all.

I'm sure some of you fellow Cramster members out there have some interesting stories.

There was the kid across the hall freshman year who Aderol'ed himself into a 36-hour sleepless stupor. Don't take Aderol… just don't.

Then there's the classic (and much more popular) I'm-going-to-go-to-sleep-at-4-and-wake-up-at-5 method that is meant to secure some semblance of sanity.

There are the library residents, the library frequenters, the casual library users and the kids who enjoy studying outside right next to the library.

And of course you can't forget the kids who never venture near the library in favor of blasting rock music and pacing around the room as some hypnotic memorization strategy.

I told you I'd seen a lot of weird things.

But this post is about what you've seen – I'm sure there are some crazy stories out there, so please share them with us so we can get a good laugh in while taking a break from our studies.

What off-the-wall study methods have you seen or taken part in? Have you ever tried any crazy methods with surprising results?

Gotta love stop days.

Including the preceding or ensuing weekend, stop days give every college student a chance to catch his or her breath and relax for at least a few days before final exams begin.

But just like normal school days, in which you are often scrambling to complete 10 different activities while still finding time to study, there is an art to maximizing your stop days.

So without further ado, here are five suggestions to keep in mind as you near those glorious few open dates on the calendar.

1. Don't study for at least two days. This one is self explanatory. You miss out on the whole idea of stop days if you plow through them buried in a textbook. Don't worry – you'll still have time to get your required amount of studying in before your first test. Cramming four days before the test is the first indication of Laymen's Acute Memory Evaporation, or LAME for short.

2. Sleep in. I know what you're thinking. If you get up at 9 a.m. and study for five hours, you then have the entire afternoon and evening free. Don't do it. Trust me, if you set your alarm for 9 a.m., one of two things will happen: You wake up in a terrible mood or you reset your alarm for noon. Sleep in now so you can pull late nighters in the future without suffering during the following day's test.

3. Go on a mini adventure. Face it: In the not-so-distant future, you will be spending ten hours a day studying, four hours a day wasting time while trying to get your mind off studying, and at least another two hours doing what you think is studying but is really nothing more than skillful daydreaming. Take advantage of stop days and go do something adventurous to escape the campus bubble. You'll be more productive as a result once you hit the books.

4. Exercise. I don't know exactly how you'll feel after your finals are over, but I do know how you won't feel – fit. Work out during stop days so that once you become the academic version of a couch potato you don't start to resemble an actual one.

5. Utilize Cramster. Eventually you will have to hit the books. Just make sure it's near the end of stop days. Running through practice problems here allows you to see the logic behind the complicated language and equations. But you knew that already.

Any tips I left out? How do you best utilize your stop days?

Why one university thinks Facebook study groups are grounds for expulsion.

College students' transition into the Web 2.0 world has been seamless. Professors' and school administrators' transition has been anything but.

Chris Avenir, a freshman at Ryerson University in Toronto has been a hot topic of conversation recently after school officials determined that his Facebook study group was in violation of the school's academic policies.

Avenir is now facing 147 cases of academic misconduct - the number of students in the online study group.

The worst-case scenario is expulsion. The best case is an F in his chemistry class.

Doesn't seem fair to a kid who simply found a way to recreate live study sessions – an activity as frequent as attending class – over the Internet.

It raises questions over how well professors and school administrations actually understand the new face of the Web. Facebook is now home to over 100 legitimate educational applications that function as anything from schedule builders to study group facilitators.

What was so wrong about Avenir's actions?

It's not like his classmates and he had access to test answers. Just as students do every day on Cramster, Avenir was fostering a collaborative environment designed to better grasp the concepts at hand.

Perhaps professors fear change. Perhaps the Web 2.0 world is just too new to accept as a valid classroom resource.

Whatever the case, Avenir's unfortunate situation should serve as a wake-up call to universities around the world that the Web is here to stay, and it's better to embrace it lest an entire student body view the policies of those above them as antiquated and non-progressive.

At Cramster, it is our goal to weave professors into our web, to prove that the Internet is a resource, not a danger.

Here's to hoping you and your classmates can find a way to ease your professors' fears.

What's your take on Avenir's predicament? Was the punishment warranted? What would you do if you were in his shoes?

Why relying too heavily on practice tests can have an adverse effect on your actual test performance.

As I wrote in my last entry, taking practice tests is the best way to study. However, there is one major pitfall that all avid practice test takers must avoid; we'll call it the "one trick pony syndrome." The point of practice tests is to ensure that you can apply what you learned in class to paper, to ensure that you aren't the guy with a 50-inch vertical who can't make a shot to save his life.

The point is not to bond yourself to the practice test to the point where switching numbers will result in temporary brain paralysis.

Many students will run through the teacher-provided practice test five, ten or even twenty times as their only form of studying. Doing this can easily result in an inability to solve questions with slight modifications. Sure, knowing the steps to solve problems may be more important when taking a test than knowing the theory behind the steps, but don't put all your eggs in one basket.

"Man, you sure can ace that practice test… but can you do anything else?"

Don't be that guy. Know the methods to solve test questions but also understand why step A leads to step B. Two-story houses need a staircase. Trust me.

Ever fallen into the practice test trap? Any thoughts on strategies to avoid the trap?