1. Evaluate your Priorities and core courses

The first step we took every semester was to evaluate our priorities and what our main goals were for each semester. Are you going for straight As (link) this semester? Are you trying to work on time management (link) this year? Defining these priorities and goals lets us determine the "core" courses we needed to take. These were the ones we'd focus the most on. They dictated our schedule and all other coursework. This may differ from one person to the next depending on your priorities (e.g., graduating at a specific time, improving your GPA, finishing courses tested on entrance exams, etc.). Based on past performance and/or semesters, it was also crucial for us to accurately determine how many hours we could handle and more specifically, how many hours each type of course we could handle.