For the most part, when your new, the prospective friends come to you. The trick is to know a bit about the kids approaching you, are they the kind of people who make you feel comfortable and welcome? Do they seem like the friends you hung with at your old school? If you feel comfortable after spending more than an hour with the new people, you may be on to something. If you feel you are putting on an act or aren't being yourself, a long term friendship may be hard to sustain.

If the cliques in your new school are well established you may not have such an easy time of it, but you still have an advantage. No matter what reputation you had at your old school, chances are good that nobody at the new one knows anything about it. It may sound crass but the fact is, changing schools gives you a chance to re-invent yourself. Even if you are pretty happy with the person you were at your old school, changing venues gives you a chance to undo social mistakes of the past.

Nobody here has to know that you walked around school all day with toilet paper hanging out of your pants in 8th grade, or that you had a perpetually runny nose all through elementary school. The new kids only need to know that you are a great basketball player, that you write poetry better than Elizabeth Barret-Browning or that you can paint circles around Picasso. Here is your chance to put your best foot forward with little or no challenges. Don't be too shy, smile a lot, listen to the other kids (how else will you know what they are like?) and avoid too much talk about your old school. You'll be drowning in friends in no time.

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