Just two days ago, in his Labor Day speech, President Obama had this to say about veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan: "On the day I announced the end to our combat mission in Iraq, I spent some time, as I often do, with our soldiers and veterans. This new generation of troops coming home from Iraq has earned its place alongside that greatest generation. Like them, they have the skills and training and drive to move America's economy forward once more. And from the time I took office, we've been investing in new care, new opportunity, and a new commitment to their service that's worthy of their sacrifice." A central part of this new opportunity is the chance to attend college under the new GI Bill.

Next week, more than 3 million students will start college. Many will make basic mistakes that can easily be avoided—if you only know what they are. This week we point out the five most common mistakes, and offer parents tips on how they can set their child on the path to success at college:

Learning to write well is one of the most important skills you can learn at college, yet many students think paper writing is something you do only in a "writing" course and then never have to think about again. Wrong! Many employers today are looking for workers who have strong communication skills, and that includes the ability to write. You'll be sure to improve your writing skills if you know the 10 biggest mistakes college students make in writing papers—and how to avoid them:

It's out! Our new book, The Secrets of College Success, is now available "wherever books are sold." For loyal followers of this U.S. News blog—and for web surfers who just stopped by—we offer our 10 best tips for college success (the book has 627 more): 

1. Take control.

For many students, the most striking difference between college and high school is that at college there's no one there to stand over you and tell you what to do. Getting to class, doing the homework, getting your papers in on time—all of these are things you're going to have to do without a parent or teacher to beat on you. Step up to bat and take responsibility. You're in charge of this thing.

There is growing concern at American colleges about why so few women study science, technology, engineering, or math (the so-called "STEM" fields). Though women constitute more than half of undergraduates, according to a study of college students in 2009, 138,000 bachelor's degrees in STEM fields went to men, while only 88,000 went to women.

The situation: You've just been given your first 15-page college research paper assignment. Your professor wants you to use books and scholarly journals in writing your paper, and doesn't want you to rely solely on Google and Wikipedia to do the research. What do you do? You could call your parents or ask advice from a friend. But a far better idea would be to follow these 10 best tips, offered by visiting blogger Cheryl LaGuardia, research librarian at Harvard University's Widener Library:

One of the critical decisions to make in choosing a college is between the research university and the small college. In the spring, we looked at the case for the research university. This week, we consider what advantages a small (or liberal arts) college has to offer. The typical small college is a school that has an enrollment of less than 5,000 students, doesn't have a graduate school, and has a student-to-faculty ratio of under 10:1—some are even as low as 5:1.

[Find student-faculty ratio via U.S. News's Liberal Arts Colleges rankings.]

In just a few weeks, 20 million students will go to college, more than 3 million of them for the first time. Here are our top 10 tips for parents of off-to-college students:

It used to be you got a general adviser when you came into college, then an adviser in your major department after a couple of years. But with record enrollments (often without commensurate rises in funding), many colleges are having to cut back the amount of face-to-face academic advising they can provide. Because of these changes, now would be a good time to think about do-it-yourself advising. Luckily, it's not all that hard to become your own best adviser, especially if you follow our 10-step program

Unfortunately, college is not all fun and games: There are many annoyances college students have to put up with. Some students count going to class as one of them. We can't help you there. But if the petty problems of day-to-day college life are getting on your nerves, we have some remedies for you. Have a look at our top 10 annoyances—and how you might get around them:

Last week, we offered 7 tips for that ever-expanding newcomer on the college scene: distance learning. This week, we offer 7 more:

The U.S. government defines distance education as "a formal education process in which the students and instructor are not in the same place." It may seem like just about any college course satisfies this definition, but this specifically is referring to online courses that you take either in pursuit of a degree or to improve your knowledge and skills in some area. Distance learning is a really big thing these days: At any given time, more than 2.5 million students are taking these classes. And with the increasing demand for higher education, given globalization and the competitive job market, this number is bound to grow exponentially in years to come. 

To get you started thinking about distance learning, and to help you figure out if it might be for you, here are 7 tips for prospective students thinking about online education:

Last week, we offered the first four of our eight tips for composing the list of colleges to which you'll apply. Here are four more:

For many high school students, the summer before senior year is the time when they start thinking seriously about applying to college. With more than 4,000 choices—most of which one knows almost nothing about—the task can be daunting, indeed. But how you start the process can have important ramifications for how the choice turns out. To help you approach the task, here are some of our top tips for composing the list of colleges to which you'll apply. (Check back next week for more tips on this topic.)

You might have thought that a college student glued to the TV watching cooking shows is wasting his or her time. Au contraire. There's lots of good advice for college to be gleaned from Bobby Flay and Paula Deen, if you only know where to look. Here are a dozen of the most important tips: