Take it easy the first semester. 

• Come to U.S. for your Bachelors if you can, it's a lot of fun!
• Classes here are very interesting, the professors use various visual and other such aides/ resources to make the classes very interesting. I personally do not feel like missing even one class! Never "Bunk" classes. Some teachers will take you out of the class or give you lesser grades if you are absent more then 3 times - they are serious about it. 
• Your every day performance counts, all homework counts toward your final grade. Do your projects! Delayed HW is a BIG NO. But again Home work here is so interesting, you will never feel like not doing it. 
• Academic integrity is a big part of U.S. education. Any form of cheating or copying (plagiarism) is dealt with severely. 
• Make sure you have a little knowledge of using computers - basic Windows knowledge. 
• Learn typing because most of your home works will be type written. 
• If you enjoy scholarly advancement, studying in the U.S. is a lot of fun. 
• Make the most of the opportunities and resources that are available to you.
• FIND A GOOD ROOMATE! -Having a good roommate helps!! When you live with roommates it is also essential that you divide your work equally and fairly. If cleanliness is important to you, make sure that is the case with your roommates too!
• Get a Mentor in your field, talk to the professors often about your career direction (always make an appointment and never waste their time, talk professional stuff) 
• There are professional groups/clubs for each school for e.g. COGAH in our college is for Council of Graduate Art Historians. Its good to be involved with such groups to advance professionally. These kinds of groups often meet weekly and discuss issues and developments in their fields. 
• It is very exciting to see these scholars talk. You can learn a lot from such scholars, not just about your subject but also a lot from their personal demeanor. 
• The U.S. is quite safe for single women. It is not the same as being a girl student in Delhi living alone. Here, most of the times girl students have roommates and live near universities. At the same time I would encourage girls to take adequate precautions especially when coming back from the university to home at nights (there are usually some kind of university (security) services that drop you home, make use of such services). 
• You can also take classes in another country for a semester and earn credits towards your degree. Contact your college's Study Abroad Office. 
• The important thing is to keep in mind the purpose of your stay in the US. Have fun but also don't get deviated from your goals.

• I think the basic premise of all good art is to be able to communicate beyond the boundaries of language, culture, time and ages because we are basically human beings Coming to a new country opens you up as an individual; it helps you to think more as a "Global Being". After coming here I constantly look up on what is happening world over in the art field, when I was in India I was only looking at what was happening in India. 
• You will get more exposure to new visual sensations. 
• In the beginning when I came here, all the visual clues around me changed so drastically that I found it difficult to paint for some time, but over a little time I started opening up to these new experiences.
  

• The curriculum is more diversified, at the first look you might think why an engineer should have to take a Humanity course or why a Fine art major should take a computer course, but in today's expanse of knowledge it very important to be aware of advancements in other fields. The whole premise of education in the U.S. is to be a better scholar and not to just pass out of college with a degree. 
• When you look at the course curriculum you might think that its very easy, but the difference between Indian curriculum and U.S. curriculum is that in India all the stuff written in the curriculum might not be covered whereas in the U.S. the student will learn and know everything that is set out for a particular course.

Writing all this reminds me of a quote by a Job recruiter I found on the net (unfortunately I could not get the url) "There are the personal kinds of advantages in which an individual student will go abroad and experience things that they've never seen before and they do, indeed, come back as changed persons. They walk into our office and there's a certain confidence that they exhibit that they simply didn't have before they left."