Making the Most of College


Book Description

Why do some students make the most of college, while others struggle and look back on years of missed deadlines and missed opportunities? What choices can students make, and what can teachers and university leaders do, to improve more students’ experiences and help them achieve the most from their time and money? Most important, how is the increasing diversity on campus—cultural, racial, and religious—affecting education? What can students and faculty do to benefit from differences, and even learn from the inevitable moments of misunderstanding and awkwardness? From his ten years of interviews with Harvard seniors, Richard Light distills encouraging—and surprisingly practical—answers to fundamental questions. How can you choose classes wisely? What’s the best way to study? Why do some professors inspire and others leave you cold? How can you connect what you discover in class to all you’re learning in the rest of life? Light suggests, for instance: studying in pairs or groups can be more productive than studying alone; the first and most important skill to learn is time management; supervised independent research projects and working internships offer the most learning and the greatest challenges; and encounters with students of different religions can be simultaneously the most taxing and most illuminating of all the experiences with a diverse student body. Filled with practical advice, illuminated with stories of real students’ self-doubts, failures, discoveries, and hopes, Making the Most of College is a handbook for academic and personal success.




Win the College Soccer Recruiting Game


Book Description

If your child aspires to play competitive college soccer, this book is a must read.The college soccer recruiting process can be, at once, mysterious, imperfect, and frustrating. Perhaps the ultimate U.S. soccer insider, Steve Gans provides parents with a roadmap and gameplan for navigating the process from youth soccer to recruitment to a college soccer program. In this book, Steve explains each step in the college recruiting process as well as the ways that players and parents should prepare for them. Topics include:?Engaging recruiting coaches?Creating highlight videos?Selecting Identification Camps?Evaluating Showcase tournaments?Considering MLS Next (boys) or ECNL (girls) options?Weighing MLS Next vs. High School?Dealing with Recruiting Coach movement?Understanding College Draft Boards?Realizing the impact of playing out of position?Using club recruiting services?Appreciating Pros and cons of college coaches at your club?Dealing with unpredictability in the processThis book includes 7 interviews with top college coaches to help you understand the particular recruiting criteria and processes of each of them.The book begins, and is interspersed, with Steven's personal soccer journey and the recruiting challenges faced by his sons Noah and Josh. As Steve will attest, each soccer recruiting story is personal, and each player and their family should prepare for, and hopefully embrace, the journey




College


Book Description

The strengths and failures of the American college, and why liberal education still matters As the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential. The traditional four-year college experience—an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers—is in danger of becoming a thing of the past. In College, prominent cultural critic Andrew Delbanco offers a trenchant defense of such an education, and warns that it is becoming a privilege reserved for the relatively rich. In describing what a true college education should be, he demonstrates why making it available to as many young people as possible remains central to America's democratic promise. In a brisk and vivid historical narrative, Delbanco explains how the idea of college arose in the colonial period from the Puritan idea of the gathered church, how it struggled to survive in the nineteenth century in the shadow of the new research universities, and how, in the twentieth century, it slowly opened its doors to women, minorities, and students from low-income families. He describes the unique strengths of America’s colleges in our era of globalization and, while recognizing the growing centrality of science, technology, and vocational subjects in the curriculum, he mounts a vigorous defense of a broadly humanistic education for all. Acknowledging the serious financial, intellectual, and ethical challenges that all colleges face today, Delbanco considers what is at stake in the urgent effort to protect these venerable institutions for future generations.




The Years that Matter Most


Book Description

The bestselling author of How Children Succeed returns with a devastatingly powerful, mind-changing inquiry into higher education in the U.S.







What the Best College Students Do


Book Description

The author of the best-selling What the Best College Teachers Do is back with more humane, doable, and inspiring help, this time for students who want to get the most out of college—and every other educational enterprise, too. The first thing they should do? Think beyond the transcript. The creative, successful people profiled in this book—college graduates who went on to change the world we live in—aimed higher than straight A’s. They used their four years to cultivate habits of thought that would enable them to grow and adapt throughout their lives. Combining academic research on learning and motivation with insights drawn from interviews with people who have won Nobel Prizes, Emmys, fame, or the admiration of people in their field, Ken Bain identifies the key attitudes that distinguished the best college students from their peers. These individuals started out with the belief that intelligence and ability are expandable, not fixed. This led them to make connections across disciplines, to develop a “meta-cognitive” understanding of their own ways of thinking, and to find ways to negotiate ill-structured problems rather than simply looking for right answers. Intrinsically motivated by their own sense of purpose, they were not demoralized by failure nor overly impressed with conventional notions of success. These movers and shakers didn’t achieve success by making success their goal. For them, it was a byproduct of following their intellectual curiosity, solving useful problems, and taking risks in order to learn and grow.




The Case against Education


Book Description

Why we need to stop wasting public funds on education Despite being immensely popular—and immensely lucrative—education is grossly overrated. Now with a new afterword by Bryan Caplan, this explosive book argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skills but to signal the qualities of a good employee. Learn why students hunt for easy As only to forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for average workers, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy. Romantic notions about education being "good for the soul" must yield to careful research and common sense—The Case against Education points the way.




Hey AdmissionsMom


Book Description

Welcome to a no-nonsense, unconventional approach to college admissions! Hey AdmissionsMom: Real Talk from Reddit from the voices of r/ApplyingToCollege, with Carolyn Allison Caplan, aka u/admissionsmom FRONT DOOR COLLEGE ADMISSIONS HELP Discover what over 100,000 engaged r/ApplyingToCollege subscribers are learning about as they discuss a fresh approach to college admissions. With Hey AdmissionsMom, Carolyn and the kids from r/ApplyingToCollege give you a place to stop trying to figure out what your top schools want in you and instead ask yourself, What do I want out of life when I leave high school? What do I see for myself? You're a talented, interesting student, and when you really know who you are, you're going to make the best decisions for yourself As a sophomore or junior entering the college admissions process, maybe you're overwhelmed by the paperwork, school descriptions, test score requirements, extracurricular activity options, and the daunting task of figuring it all out without losing yourself. Others of you already started the college admissions process and feel okay about your applications, but you're struggling with the personal statement or essays. Or, you want permission not to be a carbon copy of the ideal student and want out-of-the-box ways to be yourself, both in life and in the admissions process. And you're not just managing your expectations, but also your parents. College admissions can be especially intimidating if your high school sucks, you're first in your family to go to college, or you haven't always been a model student. You might also be a concerned parent or mentor looking for a guide designed not to stress you and your kid out and might even help with that as you learn the ropes of college admissions. For all the times you or your high school student thought, "There has to be a better way," when you hear advice about high-performance, achievement, and crazy amounts of EC's (extracurriculars)... You were right. You just found it. Hey AdmissionsMom: Real Talk from Reddit In this refreshingly honest, irreverent digest of college admissions questions and answers from u/admissionsmom and the subreddit, r/ApplyingToCollege, you'll find 37 bite-sized chapters of practical information, inspiring personal stories, insider tips, and yes, we have to be honest about this here - the occasional swear word, too. The time is NOW for you to: Focus on who you are, what you want from life, and how college fits into your goals, not the reverse Write essays and personal statements that actually sound like you, the real you Stop being one of 50,000 students applying to the same 20 colleges Stay positive even if you're not valedictorian or you didn't cure cancer (nobody else has either -- yet) Find questions asked by students just like you, so you don't feel alone or like you're the only one who doesn't already have it all figured out Take a deep breath as you learn about mindfulness By the end of Hey AdmissionsMom: Real Talk from Reddit, you will have peeled back the layers of your authentic self and be able to appreciate your personality traits, interests, and talents as you breathe and apply to college with a smile.







Make the Most of It


Book Description

The perfect gift for high school graduates! College is a time when new and exciting horizons stretch out before us. We meet new friends and form relationships that last a lifetime. We discern what’s most important and what our ultimate direction in life will be. For those of us whose college days are in the rearview mirror, we long for recent graduates to love college and to make the most it. Often, we’re at a loss as to what advice to give our friends and family who are heading off to college—even though those years may well be the most consequential years of their lives. From Biola president Barry Corey comes the perfect guide to making the college years count. It touches on everything from college romances to making friends, from getting sleep to embracing boredom, from your inner life to your social life. In this slender volume, Barry Corey gives you wisdom that rings true but is rarely passed on. He serves up tips for survival, virtues to embrace, ideas to think about, and habits to cultivate for an enjoyable and flourishing journey through college. After all, you will remember your college experience for the rest of your life. Make the most of it.