What’s Your Advice for Students Starting College? An Open Letter to Students

Credit: iStock/FatCamera
Credit: iStock/FatCamera
As the new academic year rolls around, hordes of new students venture onto campus. Some of them did well in high school and come to college prepared for the rigors and challenges of higher education. Too many, lacking socialization, treat college as the 13th year of high school. Over the years, I have found myself spending more time each fall explicitly addressing some of the ways students can do well in college. There’s no better time that the start of their careers. I have been thinking about student success and doing research on it for many years and decided it would be a great challenge to try and distill all I would like to tell students on day one into under a thousand words. This is my attempt. Try it yourself and see what you would add. If I could have a conversation with every college student one on one, these are the four main points I would share.

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