The Adulting Skills Checklist: 50 Things Every College Student Should Know Before Move-In Day

Most college students leave home knowing how to do the big things: study, make friends, navigate a new environment. What catches them is the small stuff. The student who doesn't know how to make a doctor's appointment. The student who doesn't realize laundry detergent goes in before the clothes. The student who has never written a formal email.

This checklist is designed to be worked through with your student during the summer before college. It's not about being impressive or overprepared. It's about arriving at school without a set of unnecessary friction points that accumulate into a general sense of not being able to manage adult life.

Go through it together. Check off what they already know. Practice what they don't. The whole list shouldn't take more than a few afternoons.

Laundry and Clothing Care

• Sort a load of laundry (lights, darks, delicates) without help
• Load and start a washing machine, including selecting the right cycle and water temperature
• Move laundry from washer to dryer on time, without being reminded
• Set the dryer temperature correctly for different fabric types
• Read a clothing care label and know what the symbols mean
• Hand wash a delicate item and lay it flat to dry
• Know which items should never go in the dryer (wool sweaters, anything with elastic, structured blazers)
• Iron or steam a wrinkled shirt (or at least know the shower trick)
• Remove a common stain (coffee, grease, grass) before washing

Food and Cooking

• Scramble, fry, and hard-boil eggs
• Boil water and cook pasta correctly (salt the water, check for doneness, drain without a disaster)
• Cook rice on a stovetop or in a rice cooker
• Make a basic stir-fry with whatever protein and vegetables are on hand
• Read a recipe and follow it without calling for help
• Store leftovers properly (what goes in the fridge vs. freezer, how long things last)
• Defrost meat safely (in the fridge, not on the counter overnight)
• Use a microwave effectively for more than reheating pizza (steaming vegetables, cooking oatmeal, making eggs)
• Know when food has gone bad without having to ask
• Make a grocery list and shop to a budget
• Read a nutrition label well enough to understand what they're buying

Health and Medical

• Locate and read their insurance card (front and back, know what the group number and member ID are)
• Know their pharmacy's name and location, and have the phone number saved
• Call to make and cancel a doctor's appointment (have them actually do this, not watch you do it)
• Know how to request a prescription refill by phone or app
• Identify the campus health center and know how to access it, including after-hours options
• Know the campus counseling center's hours and how to schedule an appointment
• Take care of a basic injury: how to clean and bandage a cut, what warrants urgent care vs. the ER
• Know what over-the-counter medications to keep on hand (pain reliever, antacid, cold medicine, allergy medication, anti-diarrheal)
• Recognize the signs of a concussion and know not to "sleep it off" without being checked
• Know what to do if a friend needs emergency help: call 911 or campus safety, stay with them, put them in the recovery position if unconscious

Money and Banking

• Check their bank account balance without prompting
• Set up and use mobile banking on their phone
• Understand how a debit card differs from a credit card
• Know their account's overdraft policy and what happens if they overdraw
• Transfer money between accounts (from a parental account to their checking, for example)
• Use Venmo or Zelle to split costs
• Read a bank statement and identify charges they don't recognize
• Know how to dispute a charge with their bank
• List every recurring subscription charged to their account and know the cost of each
• File their own taxes (or at least understand what documents they'll need and how to start)

Communication and Logistics

• Write a professional email to a professor or administrator: subject line, greeting, clear request, sign-off
• Leave a voicemail and return calls they don't recognize (yes, this is a real skill gap for many students)
• Address and mail an envelope with a stamp
• Track a package and know where campus packages are held
• Fill out a paper form accurately (medical history, housing paperwork, tax documents)
• Know their own social security number by heart, or where to find it quickly
• Have their passport or state ID in a safe place on campus, not just at home

Car and Transportation (if applicable)

• Check and fill the tire pressure with a pressure gauge
• Check the oil level and know when it needs changing
• Know what to do if the check engine light comes on
• Jump-start a car (or at least know to call roadside assistance and have the number)
• Change a flat tire or know how to call for help and safely wait for it
• Pump gas and know which grade their car requires
• Parallel park (genuinely useful in college towns)

Home and Space Management

• Clean a bathroom: toilet, sink, shower, floor
• Unclog a drain
• Change a lightbulb and know the difference between bulb types
• Know when and how to report a maintenance issue (dorm, apartment, or otherwise)
• Take out trash and recycling on schedule
• Understand the basics of their lease if they'll be living off-campus (what breaking it means, what the security deposit covers)

How to Use This Checklist

Work through it together during the summer. Don't just hand it to your student. Go through each item and either confirm they can do it or use the conversation as an opening to practice.

Focus on the gaps, not the wins. Most students will already know many of these. The checklist is useful because it surfaces the ones they don't, which are usually the same two or three categories for most families: healthcare, formal communication, and money management.

Don't do it all in one sitting. This works best spread across the summer, woven into real situations. When they need a prescription refilled, have them call. When it's time to do laundry, step back and let them run it. When you get a bank statement, look at it together.

Practice counts more than explanation. Telling your student how to make a doctor's appointment does much less than having them actually call one. The same is true for cooking, laundry, and everything else on this list. The goal is experience, not information.

Laundry is one of the first adulting skills that goes wrong in the dorm. Our College Laundry Guide walks through exactly what to teach before move-in day.

A Note on What This Isn't

This checklist isn't about turning your student into a perfectly self-sufficient adult before they leave. That's not realistic, and it's not the goal.

College itself does a significant amount of this teaching, sometimes through friction and sometimes through guidance. Students figure out laundry. They learn how to navigate healthcare. They get better at email.

What this checklist does is reduce the unnecessary friction, the stuff that creates small but accumulating evidence that adult life is overwhelming. A student who arrives knowing how to handle these basics has more mental and emotional capacity for the things that actually matter: academics, friendships, figuring out who they are outside the context of their family.

That's the point. Not perfection. Just a running start.

For more on the practical skills covered here, see the full Life Skills guide. For more on the parenting side of this transition, see Helicopter Parenting guide and the Freshman Year guide.