I'm a writer, and my friend and I are making a story, that just so happens to be set in USA. Our main characters go to college, but we don't really know much about how it actually is. How does it all work? Do you choose all your own classes? Some completely unrelated to what you're actually studying or what? Living and housing? What types of colleges are there? Difference between college and university? Just a general "what is this stuff" would be really nice, if someone cared to explain a little bit

Curriculum
You "choose" all your own classes, usually from a list provided by the department of your major. For example, for physics, you have to take the math sequence from Calculus through Differential equations. Then the physics department itself has "Math Physics". 1st Semster/Quarter Chemistry is required for Physics and engineering majors, but for some odd reason, Organic chemistry and not 2nd semester chemistry is required for those majors. I've not figured that one out.

There is some choice for general ed classes - usually you have to pick from certain areas. The General Education (GE) portion is usually pretty standard and everyone in all majors had to meet the GE requirement, but in the past, Engineering students weren't required to take a diversity class - I think because they had more classes that were in their major.

The first two years is considered "lower division", and it is mostly general education classes and pre-requisites for the classes within the major. The second two years are almost exclusively within the major. Some departments recommend taking one of two GE classes while in upper division, because taking nothing but major classes can drive you bat-crazy.

College types
The higher education institutions are Community colleges, which provide instruction that meets General Education and maybe some classes within a few majors. They are lower division classes. They also provide instructions in some of the useful arts like High Volume Air Conditioning (HVAC), plumbing, Avionics maintenance Technician and so on.

I've noticed that California, Washington and Colorado have two types of Universities in their systems: There's the University of Colorado, University of California, University of Washington systems that provide Ph.D.s, as well as Masters and Bachelors degrees. and a separate California State University/Washington State university system that does Bachelors and some Masters degrees. Private colleges, like Harvard and Yale, do what they damned well please.

So, for public higher education:
Community Colleges. (Lower division GE mostly)
State Universities. (BS and some MS)
Universities of State (All degrees)

Housing
I've lived in "graduate housing" and "undergraduate housing" which is on campus apartments where two or three students share the apartment; they were pretty kewl. Basically, I didn't choose a room mate and let the University assign my room mate; my room mate was a sociopath; but at least he was not a complete jerk.

There are also dorms. The dorms are cheaper and, imho, human zoos and utter chaos.. Grad students do not live in dorms. I don't know if that is just because grad students tend to be serious students or they're not allowed to live in dorms. I knew some

Married student housing was the best. If you were married, you could live there. People there were... sane and more mature. They scheduled school for children and had daycare for children as well. The Universities education department used the grad student children as test subjects, so it was pretty low cost.

There was the off campus housing options: the Greek system. I didn't have much respect for those in the Greek system. Frat boys and sorority girls. I'm not going to go into why, because if you can't say something nice, best not to say anything at all.

Or you could just get an apartment on your own. After I left the "graduate housing" I did this - got a little studio apartment in the basement. It was a total dive. I mean, bad. But I didn't have a room mate.

For my first degree, I lived at home. Not recommended because a) Home is usually far away from the University and b) your parent, who grew up on an Indian reservation, had an 8th grade education, and religion wise was a fundamentalist who considered all study of science to be "the sin of pride" and those who partook of that study were damned to the lowest regions of hell.

I knew one fellow who had the original idea of getting a used beater camping trailer and a parking pass. That was a lot cheaper than living in the dorms, he didn't have to live in the zoo, and his space was actually a bit larger than the dorm rooms. Huh.

Colleges vs. Universities
Most Americans use the terms college and university interchangeably, but a college is really something like "The college of Arts and Sciences" where all the liberal art departments were collected under a Dean as the leader, for example. Americans don't know that Chemistry, physics and other pure sciences are liberal arts; under this college were the departments of English, Art, Music, Chemistry etc.. We also had "The Engineering College", with departments of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Chemical engineering, Civil engineering etc.

The collection of all these colleges - college of Medicine, College of Arts and Sciences, Engineering College, Business college and so on were the "university".

Transportation
The University of Washington sold a "bus pass", you could ride Any bus any where as long as the fee was less than $3. That was a great deal.

If I had to do it over again, I'd get a small cheap motorcycle. That's what I wanted to do.

Bicycles were common at the University of Washington - bicyclist are often jokingly called "the Washington State Bird". I tried riding a bicycle from home to U in California. Californians have a thing for cars, and consider people on bicycles to be lower forms of life that block traffic and deserve nothing but death. After being hit and having my bike destroyed, I counted myself lucky and returned to driving my car.

Cars suck because you have car payments, repairs, insurance and how the heck to you pay all that with financial aid that says NO CARS?

Social Life
My social life involved two groups of people; my old High school clique who tried to get me to fail by getting me drunk, and my college friends who... liked to get drunk. By restricting my interaction time and scheduling hang over mornings, I was able to navigate through social interactions. At one university, the faculty themselves like to join the getting drunk.

As far as choosing classes goes, it's a question of meeting requirements for your major... usually you'll have more classes focused on that specific field of study, naturally, but there's also usually a requirement that you take a certain number of elective or liberal studies classes, so that you have a "well-rounded education."

I'll have to disagree with Stuart- while community colleges are definitely more useful for associate's degrees and transfer credits, there's no difference between "University of STATE" and "STATE University." Each school may have its own focus, but that's where the difference lies- they're all in the state educational system, so they all provide much of the same resources- example: Arizona has three state universities; Arizona State University (ASU), University of Arizona (U of A), and my alma mater, Northern Arizona University (NAU). You could get everything from a bachelor's degree all the way through a PhD, but each school had a slightly different area of focus.

Each campus will usually have a variety of housing options, from the traditional dormitories (think the University expansion packs from the Sims games), to the apartments that Stuart mentions, to off-campus options, which in my experience were the vastly preferred option- I'm not sure any of my friends junior or senior year actually lived on campus- they were all in houses or apartments. (i think this may have had something to do with the benefit of being able to choose the people you lived with that way... on campus housing was notoriously bad with illegal activity... mostly marijuana, but also lots of underage drinking... not exactly an ideal roommate)

College vs University and Transportation I don't really have anything to add to Stuart's comment.

As far as socializing, while there's definitely a lot that does revolve around drinking (either at bars or... not), I think the biggest thing I'd have to say is the clubs on campus. Virtually all my friends from university came from the Model United Nations club that I was part of for three years- I was a political science and international affairs dual major, so a club like that lined up great with my interests, but wasn't a "class" per se. Becoming an officer in it also meant that I got a lot of experience that looks good on resumes and applications now, and it also meant that I ended up with lots of contacts, both fellow students and faculty, that are still some of the people who I turn to most often for advice.

Some colleges/universities (frankly, the terms are used interchangeably in the US, even though a University is supposed to be a place that has more than one college in it) are more open than others in terms of required courses. I went to a Jesuit university with a specific philosophy of what an educated person should know or be familiar with and most of the courses or types of course were required as a base before one's major. At many colleges, students have little choice about what they take for subjects the first two years, but there seems to be a trend where the requirements are shrinking.

College costs are phenomenal. Many students take out loans and some qualify for various scholarships. Parents save for years to be able to send their kids off to college. Many graduate with massive amounts of debt. Community college is subsidized by the state and is an affordable alternative, You can google the average costs of a four year education. I believe it is about $200,000 or $50,000 per semester, but it really depends. It can cost a fortune to go to Harvard, for example, unless the student qualifies for scholarships and many Harvard students qualify. Scholarships are based on either need or merit. There are also a ton of privately given scholarships, endowed by different individuals and organizations of varying amounts. As a made up example, because I don't have any specific ones in mind, you can win $100 scholarship from Campell's soup!

Community colleges offer associate degrees and often offer technical and trade degrees. Some states have more robust programs than others. After a community college, many students transfer to a four year college to get a bachelor degree, however, it's not always easy or possible to get into many four year colleges with the credits from a community college. It depends on the four year institution.

Stewart left out private colleges and universities from his list, of which there are many. State universities vary in quality and are affordable to residents of the states they are located within and expensive to everyone else. Of course there are exceptions. The University of New Hampshire is expensive, for example, for both residents and non-residents of New Hampshire. Typically, state schools are less exclusive than many private schools, but again...it all depends.

As for social life, there does seem to be a lot of drinking because young people are away from parental eyes and foot lose and fancy free for the first time. The legal drinking age is 21 and it's very hard for colleges to regulate the legal and non-legal drinking that happens at many parties. Bars can do a better job. Sports also seem to be a big part of many colleges since college sports is big business in the US, especially American style football. However, your social life does not need to revolve around drink or sports for that matter. It's all in what you choose, meaning which group of people you choose to spend your time with. You can usually find like-minded people anywhere you go, but at some colleges, if you aren't into sports or drinking to drunkenness, you may be in the minority. It depends on the college, they are all different. There are even a couple that do not have sports or only have the pithiest of teams and the student population tends to be more geeky overall.

Some school specialize in art, some in technology, again....lots of variation here. Many schools have fraternities and sororities and some don't. At some schools, Greek life is more apparent and important than at other schools.

Typically, freshman (first year) will stay in dorms and often sophomores will too. At many colleges, there are different choices after freshman year, including the option to rent houses with others in the nearby towns or to get suits within the university system. My son stayed in a gorgeous place with two other students, each had their own bedroom and bath and they shared a kitchen, living room, and laundry. They had to take a bus to get back to campus, or drive. A friend's son goes to Ponoma and had a single room his freshman year and now has a suite type situation on campus. At one school I looked at, students stayed in dorms on campus all four years because it was comfortable, affordable, social, and traditional for that college. Typically, freshmen are discouraged from bringing their cars to college, but can bring them later years.

For writing purposes, decide what's important to your character: cost, location, subjects studied, or student life. Once you've figured that out, you can find a school easily and use it to answer all of your questions.

About the California/Washington State University vs. the University of California/Washington thing...

With only a few exceptions, the State U's. are barred from offering the doctorate degree. (People get doctors confused with physicians. You go to a physician when your sick, and most of them have an M.D., which is a doctorate, but not all doctors are physicians and not all physicians are doctors. ) They recently made made an exception in Washington for a State U to include a medical school, and in California, I think while the classes for a medical school (Fresno) is at a state U, the College of Medicine there actually reports to The University of California, iirc.

The common degrees and what they're supposed to be are:
Associate of Arts - Usually covers a special Useful Arts education. A terminal degree, meaning that the student doesn't advance.
Associate of science - Same as AA but with more units, and not a terminal degree and usually covers the General Education requirement
Bachelor of Arts - A terminal degree. (terminal doesn't mean you're dying, it means it isn't supposed to be used as a prereq for the next higher degree)
Bachelor of Science A non-terminal degree with more units.
Master of Arts - beyond a bachelors, and a terminal degree.
Master of Science - This is supposed to be all the course work required for a Ph.D, and not terminal. My MS is a terminal degree and pretty much a joke. Can include a thesis but the thesis need not be original work.
Ph.D. - the definition of this is someone who has contributed to the body of knowledge - that is, an thesis that is original and never been done before. This is the highest degree in the American system, tho' "Post Doc" study is common. I heard the German system has an even higher degree that formalizes the informal "post doc" study.

I say "supposed", because there are piles of exceptions. Usually that is caused by money.

All in all, Ph.D.'s are like sausage - you have a lot of tasty, savory thoughts about them until you see how they're made. Ewwww!!!

I've noticed that the quality of the professors is a lot higher at a University of Washington/California than at a State university. For example, I was confused about wave particle duality and what Schrodinger's equation really was, and none of the professors at the State University or the private university I attended could explain it. They could do the equations, but they really didn't have a clue as to what they were doing. At the University of Washington, tho... they made it clear and I finally understood. That said, for an UNDERGRAD degree, it has been said that the University of Washington/California has some issues, because lectures are often taught by teaching assistants - who are grad students. The joke is, The Nobel prize winner shows up for the first class, announces that he will teach the class but, from time Grad Student Joe Schmoe will give a lecture because of the Nobel winner having a demanding schedule and research work. Then it's Joe Schmoe until the last day of class when you again see Dr. Nobel prize winner, who says he hoped you enjoyed his class.

Cost:
When I was young, back when we rode dinosaurs to school, College was cheap. I worked my way through on a minimum wage job. The Community college was $10 fees + books that ran about $100. The State University had fees of $100 and another $100 for books. My car insurance was $70/month and the car payments another $70, so see the problem with stupid cars?

Now? I can afford it because my employer pays for it. Otherwise, forget it. I don't need any more degrees. Degrees are pieces of paper that gets you a job. I'm gonna retire, so what do I need a degree for? I can use the University Library via the Alumni society, that's much cheaper.

AAs, ASs, BAs, and BSs are not terminal degrees. I can attest to this personally. I hold an MS in Nursing. My first degree was actually an AAS which WAS terminal. My second degree was an AA which was NOT terminal. I earned a BA in Sociology the same year I got my BS in Nursing. Neither degree was terminal.

Applied Science degrees are often terminal, because essentially the education of the person holding one is so specialized in a single area, that it is regarded as training, rather than education. They might need the same number of credits in their major as someone holding a Science degree, but their education is not nearly as well-rounded. While I agree that their overall education might not be as good, I see no reason why their credits shouldn't be allowed to transfer to colleges and the universities that govern them.

Anyhow, to give a sense of the differences between the types of degrees - Let's look at the Bachelor's Degree. If you want a Bachelor's Degree, you'll need (depending on the college or university you're attending) anywhere from 130 to 160 semester credits:

1. No matter the type of degree, you'll need to fulfill General Education Requirements. In most states, these usually include English Composition, college level Algebra, two semesters of a foreign language, and at least two classes that involve writing a 30 page paper. (One of these writing classes must be upper division [i.e. Junior or Senior level])
2. You'll be required to earn a certain number of credits in your chosen major. (e.g. Chemistry, Nursing, Psychology, Russian, Computer Science, etc.) Given the policies at your particular college, there will be other requirements, as well.
3. You'll need credits in the Arts and Sciences (subjects that cover Ethics, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Expressive Arts, History, Literature, etc.)
4. The balance of your credits will be fulfilled as you see fit, depending on your tastes, your plans, yada yada.

The differences between an Arts degree, a Science degree, and an Applied Science degree has to do with both the number of credits required in the Arts and Sciences area, and those in your chosen major.

An Arts degree is probably the hardest of the three, because even though you are trying to major in one field you will be expected to gain credit (and more importantly, knowledge) in totally unrelated areas. And you will have to prove that you can express yourself in writing.

So if you're really into Computer Science, too bad. You will be required to take classes in Philosophy, Psychology, History, Ethics, and Expressive Arts.

If you're totally into Philosophy, tough shit. You will be required to take classes in subjects like Chemistry, Botany, Archaeology, and Microbiology.

So...for example:

Someone getting a BA in something like Chemistry:
1. GERs
2. 36 credits required in your major.
3. No fewer than 42 credits to be spread evenly among 6 perspectives: Social Science, History, Expressive Arts, Literature, Ethic, Natural Science.
4. At your better colleges, a focused thesis will be required in your major or in a related field.

Someone getting a BS in Chemistry:
1. GERs
2. 42 credits required in your major.
3. No fewer than 33 credits to be spread evenly among 6 perspectives (examples above).

Someone getting a BaS in Chemistry*
1. GERs
2. 42 credits required in your major.
3. Only 21 credits to be spread evenly, etc. etc.

I'm not sure if anyone bothers with a BaS in something like Chemistry. In fact, I doubt any college would waste their time with such a degree in the Sciences. I know some Computer Programmers with BaSs, but I doubt anyone studying chemistry would settle for less than a proper education. Especially if they're looking to continue on to a Masters or a Doctorate. Someone getting an Applied Science degree probably gets one for one reason only - employment.

By the time I went to university, I was in my 40s. I rarely partied. I spent almost every waking hour reading, researching, writing, and climbing the stairs of the library. I pretty much only interacted with my professors. So, I can't really give you any sense of what went on with the student body.

Wow, this is all pretty difficult to understand. But I think I get some basics, there's a lot of things I don't understand here, but I hope they won't become too important for the writing.

A few other things: Food. When you sleep in the dorms, is it like in the sims where you get food or..?
You choose your major because you choose the classes that fits to get that major, right? And then a minor is basically the same but... Fewer classes, I would guess?
What are fraternities and sororities?

I probably have more questions, but thank you all for your help so far!

When students live at college, they will typically buy a meal plan or simply purchase food. Colleges have cafeterias and some have food courts or restaurants nearby. Also, most dorms have common kitchen areas, so students may cook if they want to, although they are often poorly equipped, so the kitchens end up being better used on occasion, as in for a party, than for a regular way to get food. The cafes could be considered a little bit like the Sims, but with tons more offerings and not in the same place where the dorms are. Have you ever watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer? If so, remember when she went through the cafeteria line at UC Sunnydale? That's a common set up.

This is from Purdue University at their food court (they have other cafeterias as well, including one run by the students themselves):

Students don't typically choose majors until after their first or second years at college. Once they do, they concentrate their courses in it. Schools will decide how many classes in a particular subject have to be taken to count as a major or a minor. Everyone declares a major (remember The Sims University?), but not everyone picks a minor. Some schools allow double majors. And you are correct, minors are less classes than major, but still enough to show a strong interest in a topic and knowledge about it.

Fraternities and Sororities are called Greek Life. They are like clubs that you join by "pledging" and are supposed to have a purpose other than just partying and drinking, but I'm not clear how many actually accomplish that purpose. Short answer by google: Wikipedia is always the source.