Best Books to Read Preparing for College

College Life
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<p>I didn’t read Cal Newport’s “Winning at College” until after I graduated. It took me 4 years to figure out everything he recommends. I highly, highly recommend because his advice is unique and unusual (ie, apply to 10 scholarships a year) but also very beneficial (I actually managed to get a few). It is also an easy read.</p>

<p>When it comes to studying, here is something I learned from an amazing professor my sophomore year. Use the learning by recall method. After class, take your notes and on a separate piece of paper, write questions to yourself over the notes- over every slide, figure, table, graph, sentence, etc. For example if a slide says “Albumin levels are increased with xyz and decreased with abc”, I would write my question like “What are albumin levels increased/decreased with?” I do this for the whole lecture, shut my notes, and then try to answer the questions (without looking at my notes!). If I don’t remember, I check my notes, and then close them and try again. Over and over and over and over until I am able to answer them. I started doing this and my semester GPA went from low 3.0 to making Dean’s List (3.5+) every semester until I graduated. This method is also nice because when exams and finals roll around, you already have a homemade exam.</p>

<p>I also found I was able to get more done when I went to the library and told myself “You are not leaving until you finish the lab report” instead of “I will study for two hours then leave”. Things in college always take longer than anticipated, so focus on the finished product, not time spent (if you want A’s).</p>

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<p>Good advice from Ugofatcat. I definitely second the idea of setting specific goals for homework and studying instead of just resolving to study for an amount of time. I find I’m more productive when I tell myself “I will write two pages of this paper and then take a break” instead of “I’ll study for two hours”.</p>

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<p>A really great little and fun book to read is “Been There, Should’ve Done That” compiled by Suzette Tyler. It has tips compiled from many students (sort of like here, but with less repetition.) I’m sending it to my niece entering college this fall after having it approved by the college students here (and more tips added in the margins).</p>

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<p>My suggestions have nothing to do with success in terms of gpa. They have to do with getting prepared for the challenge and in some cases the disappointment of what you may find.</p>

<p>They have to do with thinking and recognizing the world you are about to step into. I think that Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot is a wonderful overview not simply of what it is like at Brown, but any highly selective school, where students are way smart, often too smart for their own good, and where what happens in class is only a small part of the education, a factor that is key to your experience.</p>

<p>So too Wolfe’s Charlotte Simmons, although it is much darker and a bit more hyperbolic about the mindlessness that now pervades college campuses (there have always been drunken revelries and date rapes, only now we document and report them), even those with top tier reputations (if you google the book you will see which school this is based on). </p>

<p>DFW (david foster wallace for non-acolytes) The broom of the system is a little dated but the guy wrote it in his senior year at Amherst and it captures some of the aura of what still happens now.</p>

<p>If you are looking at non-fiction then the following are quite good.</p>

<p>College, What is was, is and should be, by Delbanco. He is a clear and disenchanted writer about how our great schools have begun to earn failing grades at teaching people how to think and write and experiment and discover in labs in place of bureaucratic hierarchies based on fund raising and scrambles for money to build new pleasure domes instead of academic hotspots. </p>

<p>If you don’t have the time for books, look to the most recent issue of the Atlantic in which a just recent grad from Harvard takes it to task for not challenging students to learn anything except the political ideology that pervades many campuses today.</p>

<p>And then there is this: “Today, institutions of higher education are mainly controlled by administrators and staffers who make the rules and set more and more of the priorities of academic life”.</p>

<p>This is the opening salvo is a pretty savage attack by Benjamin Ginsburg in The Fall of the Faculty. Sadly, I agree with much of what he has to say.</p>

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<p>Something you enjoy and/or something intellectually stimulating about a topic of value. That should “prepare” you for college.</p>

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<p>Buy self-study guides for math. Whatever math you are taking (calc, pre-calc, whatever), get a self-study guide for it and do all of the problems. Then redo the ones you got wrong. I was a math tutor at my last college, and I have all A’s in math classes. I know what I’m talking about here, is what I’m saying. So study.</p>

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<p>lol no book will really help you about college. sorry. ask questions here from people who have lived/are living it or wait to find out on your own. it is a journey, enjoy it</p>

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<p>In response to TheVet I have a follow up question or two. Socrates and Plato thought that writing was a movement away from the direct give and take of a dialogue so you are in some august company in your remarks.</p>

<p>But this was before books became a commodity. I just want to try to understand the range of your remarks. You say no book will help about college. Let us grant that you are correct. My question is for what other branches of knowledge is this also true? Physics, Philosophy, Writing, Politics etc. Or is it only college and if so, why would that be?
Thank you for taking my question seriously.</p>

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<p>I second parkemuth’s suggestion of Tom Wolfe’s “I am Charlotte Simmons”. My interviewer recommended me to read it before I go off to Penn as I guess he figured I was a little naive. I’ve never read anything like it before! It’s crazy and the fact that it is based on schools like Penn, UF, UNC, Duke…and some others makes it all more… real.</p>

<p>I finished reading it earlier this month and while there are some stuff you wish you could’ve un-read… I feel like it definitely made me more prepared for the worst in college.</p>

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<p>

College is not an academic discipline. There are no “college” experts. There are education experts, but they tend to focus in how teachers educate students, not how college students should live their lives to the fullest. Given that college life includes a myriad of factors, including social, academic, and athletic aspects, there is no unifying field that could instruct someone on how best to live college life (as opposed to how to build a certain structure, or what to know about certain ideas or past events in an academic discipline). Perhaps a psychological study might deal with the impact of college on modern students, but that would hardly be the kind of work this thread is about.</p>

<p>No, these books are best classified as “how to succeed” books, and are largely written not to enrich the quality of a field of work, but to enrich the author, who is not a qualified expert, as in legitimate academic works on physics or philosophy or what have you. They deal in the subjective and are almost always not written by (a) current college students (ignoring change over time), (b) current college students at the reader’s college (ignoring a unique social culture), (c) current college students at the reader’s college in the reader’s major (ignoring the particular academic challenges), and (d) current college students at the reader’s college in the reader’s major and pursuing the same interests and activities as the reader (thus ignoring the specific types of pursuits and time-management).</p>

<p>These books do help some people. But to pretend that they are legitimate sources of knowledge in the same way as an academic work on physics is misguided. If you doubt me, look up the authors… what qualifies them to be a definitive source on your college experience?</p>

<p>This, of course, will help prepare you for college. Learning how to identify reliable and unreliable sources is an important skill.</p>

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<p>So I heard about this guy. </p>

<p>His name was Herp the Derp. </p>

<p>And he advertised his book on CC.</p>

<p>Yay.</p>

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<p>I liked the Cal Newport book "How to be an A+ student in college’ or whatever it’s called. I got it from the library so it was free, I’m sure you can do the same.</p>

<p>Some good specific tips on study methods, approaching a research paper, time management, etc.</p>

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<p>I also read his book after hearing about it here on cc. Bought it used on Amazon for my son to look over during xmas break.</p>