Milo Goes to College is the debut studio album by the American punk rock band Descendents, released on September 4, 1982 through New Alliance Records.

In the decades since its release, it has received highly positive reviews and is now considered among the most noteworthy and important punk albums by several publications.

[5] The Descendents' 1981 Fat EP had established the band's presence in the southern California hardcore punk movement with its short, fast, aggressive songs.

[10][11] Stevenson had written the lead track, "Myage", several years earlier using a bass guitar he had found discarded in a trash bin.

[14][15] Bassist Tony Lombardo, some 20 years his bandmates' senior, wrote songs expressing his desire for stability and individuality.

[22] The Milo character became a mascot for the band and was later reinterpreted by other artists for the covers of I Don't Want to Grow Up (1985), Everything Sucks (1996), "I'm the One" (1997), "When I Get Old" (1997), 'Merican (2004), Cool to Be You (2004), Hypercaffium Spazzinate (2016), and SpazzHazard (2016).

With Aukerman away at college, the Descendents recruited Ray Cooper as both singer and second guitarist and continued performing locally for a time during 1982 and 1983.

[20] Guitarist and founding member Frank Navetta quit the band during this time, burning all his musical equipment and moving to Oregon to become a professional fisherman.

"[3] In a contemporary review for The Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau wrote: "These fishermen don't kid around about what powers hardcore hyperdrive—not simply an unjust society, but also a battered psyche.

When they're feeling bad, any kind of power—money, age, ass-man cool, the possession of a vagina—can set off their anarchic, patricidal, 'homo'-baiting, gynephobic rage.

The playing of the core band is even better than before, never mistaking increased skill with needing to show off; the Lombardo/Stevenson rhythm section is in perfect sync, while Navetta provides the corrosive power.

Add in Aukerman's in-your-face hilarity and fuck-off stance, and it's punk rock that wears both its adolescence and brains on its sleeve.

"[27][33] Jenny Eliscu of Rolling Stone called it "all straight-ahead punk — 15 songs in less than a half hour, each full of metally riffs and lightning-speed plucking by bassist Tony Lombardo, who was always the band's secret weapon.

"[34] In an interview with Bobby Makar for Alternative Press, Aukerman and Stevenson recall not knowing whether Milo Goes To College would be popular with punk-rock audiences at the time, especially being that they refused to follow the style of English punk rock bands.

[38] The LA Weekly ranked it the fourth greatest Los Angeles punk album of all time in a 2012 list, with Kai Flanders remarking "Every song speaks to [the listener's] teenage fucked-up-ness, from feeling incredibly horny to just wanting to hit someone for no reason.

"[40] Several notable artists and musicians cite Milo Goes to College as a favorite and influence, including Mike Watt of the Minutemen, David Nolte of The Last, and Zach Blair of Hagfish, Only Crime, and Rise Against.

[9] Dave Grohl of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters opined that "If the Descendents had made Milo Goes to College in 1999, they’d be living in fucking mansions.

[9] Chris Shary, who has done artwork for the Descendents and their successor band, All, since 1998, remarked that "From the minute that I heard the beginning it was like 'this is the music that I have been waiting for.