Contributed by Lindsay Shugerman, Catalogs.com Top 10 Guru

College is just around the corner.

But before you say good-bye to high school and head off for campus, there are a few secrets your high school counselors never told you.

Here’s our top 10 list of things high school seniors need to know about college, but no one else will ever tell you.

10. College cafeteria food is indeed a part of a plot

For decades, college students have suspected that the food served in the cafeteria was part of a malevolent plan, but no one knew for sure.

But now the truth can be told. The corporate masterminds who want you to spend your life gulping down 200 ounce sodas and triple patty drive-through burgers start with college cafeteria food. They know if it’s truly awful, their offerings will taste wonderful in comparison and they’ll have you hooked for life.

Sadly, it works.

9. The thinner the book, the more expensive the price

Odds are if you’re heading off to college, you’ve bought some books over the years.

But nothing can prepare you for inverse relationship between book size and price in the college bookstore. Consider yourself warned: that 20 page booklet really is $169.95.

8. Professors who write their own textbooks are the devil incarnate

Before you sign up for any class, check the required book list. If the name on the book is the same as the professor’s, run for your life.

Not only will he or she use precious amounts of class time to expound the wonderful insights in the book, there’s also the fact that you can never ever win in an argument over a test question. After all, they wrote the book.

7. The two classes you absolutely need will always be scheduled at the same time

This applies no matter what major you’ve chosen. When you need two classes to graduate or as prerequisites for the next required classes in your major, they will be scheduled for the exact same time, on the same days.

6. The two classes you need are only offered once a year

A corollary to number seven is that those two critical classes are only offered once a year. Meanwhile, you’re paying somewhere around the national budget of several small countries to take fill classes until the required ones roll around again.

And you thought college was all fun and games! Ha!

5. Your roommate will be the exact opposite of everything you value in a person

If you love peace and quiet, the college will match you up with a raving soccer fan who can’t miss a single game – or watch them anywhere but in your room. If jazz is your music of choice, count on walking into a room decked out in death metal posters.

They call it a “learning experience.”

4. Professors really do plan to bury you in assignments

Some college students think that it’s just a coincidence that they have two papers, three research projects and two exams all on the same Tuesday.

Ha! I am here to tell you that your professors gather at the start of each semester to plan just that. Amid wild drinking and frenzied sharing student names and schedules, they plot and plan to pile on as many things on one day as possible.

If you listen carefully on the night before the first class, their wild laughter can be heard across the quad. Be afraid.

3. The most expensive textbook you buy will never be opened

Sure they might appear mild-mannered, and slightly absent-minded, but trust me, college professors are truly an evil bunch. After they’ve planned your workload for that fateful Tuesday, they start on the textbook plans.

Catalogs of outrageously priced, completely useless textbooks are passed around, and each professor chooses one or two “required textbooks” with the average price tag of a slightly used Volkswagen.

2. Textbook buy-back would make a Wall Street con artist proud

As you hand over huge numbers of dollars for your textbooks, you notice the sign for book buy-back at the end of the semester. Maybe it will help with next semester’s books, you think.

Oh, you poor innocent. Every year, at book buy-back hundreds of neophyte Freshmen turn up staggering under the load of all those books.

After a nine and half hour wait in line, they finally reach the table, and the fun begins.

“That one’s not being used anymore.” “Wrong edition.” And then they come to one they will buy. That math text you bought for $150.00 new, three months ago. And opened once. By accident.

“We’ll take this one. We’ll give you $3.00.”

And off to the side, just out of sight, the professors laugh.

1. It’s addictive

After four years of dealing with this insanity, odds are you’ll do it again at another school.

Sure, it will be called grad school or med school or law school, but when you get there, you’ll recognize it all over again. Oh and that $169.95 book you had to buy back in your freshman year?

The grad school version is $300. Have fun!