What should a student do immedately after he or she is accepted into a graduate program Can someone provide advise as to what a student should do immediately after being accepted into a graduate program and has identified with a professor?

Usually students are accepted in the middle of their final year of undergrad. A window of time opens between now and when the first semester begins.

I wonder what should a student optimally do during this time to smoothly transit into the designated graduate program.

Some thoughts:


Build up relationships with other graduate students, professors
Start reading papers on the topic of focus
Start preparing course work for first year of graduate school
Start identifying specific research area and pin point thesis topic and open questions
Get to know the locale


But ultimately this question is directed at people who have went through this process. What can a student do now in the little time that he or she has to smoothly enter the graduate program?
I have three utterly contradictory pieces of advice:


The first year of graduate school will be a much more intense version of the coursework that you took as an undergraduate. In particular, the basic core courses often sink many first year students. For example, in some disciplines you may be asked to read over 1000 pages a week during that first semester, while in others you might be asked to do significantly more complex problem sets or labs than you've ever encountered previously.  If you can, I'd obtain copies of the syllabi for the required first year classes and start reading as much of the material as you can. The more breathing space you can give yourself that first semester the better. Build up your scholarly reserve.
Graduate school is a very long haul. Burnout is a very real possibility. Because you don't have a gap year, you should use your summer to expand your mind a bit. Go for a month or so of walkabout in Europe or Australia. Take what will be your last extended vacation for a little while. Build up your emotional/psychological reserves.
Unless you're in a well-funded program, you may well be destitute -- especially before you pick up a TA/RA position. Even with funding, you may only make $15-25,000 a year, which can be very hard to live on. You might want to build up your savings heading into grad school so that you don't have to take out too many loans or spend too many cold nights eating ramen noodles. Build up your financial reserves.