So what's the way to start out now? Pumping up your stats early?
Nothing's really changed wrt game play. The biggest strategic decision is if you want to graduate within a year or not. If you do, you need to rush Tamara's tutoring to open up options for her and Derek (or cheat -- I rarely recommend cheating, but this case pretty much warrants it -- it's very hard to thread the needle and get the club formed by Nov 4, never miss a club meeting, AND complete every mission offered within a week's time). The rest is pretty straightforward. If you don't want to graduate the first year, don't open the club until Oct year 2. Once a certain set of club missions are complete, an event happens that shuts down almost all activity at school (no bathroom vignettes, no hallway vignettes, no club missions, no clique missions) and they never restart.
Get your grades to >95 before month-end; get the janitorial job, get told you're a tutor.
Grab Flight and public Ops.
Figure out how you're going to approach graduation. Start working on gaining enough cash and Initiative influence to afford further power acquisitions.
Take a look at my walkthrough (link in my signature) or the walkthrough in the first post of the same thread for much more detail.