No problem. I would be happy to help!
1. The collaboration thing has been us helping each other out by sharing our notes. For example, there are days when a large portion of the class goes home for the weekend and someone would take notes of the lecture then post it for everyone to use. We have classmates that are really good at creating tables/outlines and they post it for everyone to use. I think TCOM does a good job at picking people with altruistic personalities. I don't know a lot of commuters, but I do know a large number of people that live within a 15 min radius of the school. There are lots of people that study in the library or in the main building so finding a people to study with should not be a problem like it was in undergrad.
2. This might change in the recent future but thus far, classes for first year students are not mandatory except for OMM (but only because you get points for attendance). You have three main types of "assignments" 1. Lecture 2. DSAs 3. MLMs The lectures are your basic talk from a professor using the ppt but those are not mandatory and they are voice recorded for you to listen later on. The DSAs are essentially self-study assignments that you will do on your own time either from home or at school. The MLMs are sessions held that go over the DSAs in more detail with the understanding that the class has done the assignment so they incorporate questions into it. Professors don't like to post the entire MLM (questions and answers) to the class because it discourages attendance and thus it is in your best interest to not miss MLMs because you could miss 1. High yield topics 2. Practice questions
3. Yeah they still charge you for your laptop and an iPad Mini. The reason they do that is because they have installed a few applications on the laptop that are used specifically for school material or school testing but the laptop is all yours and it comes with free repair service. I spilled orange juice on my keyboard and they replaced the entire keyboard free of charge so that is a big benefit.
Let me know if you have any other questions or want me to elaborate on anything else.