Your Complete Guide to College Success

College and real life aren't the distinct worlds they're often made out to be. With the proper skills, knowledge, and attitudes you can tackle college work and cope effectively with issues you'll encounter for the rest of your adult life, such as:

• Learning in the most effective and efficient way
• Figuring out the social scene
• Defining your goals and accomplishing them
• Creatively adapting to the changing world

Your Complete Guide to College Success is an up-to-date, evidence-based book that provides a roadmap for how to be successful in college — and afterwards. It covers a comprehensive set of academic and personal topics, and distills research results and advice into a student-friendly, readable package.

In this book, you'll get insider advice on how to get free tutoring on any topic, how to look for help with your courses before it's too late — and what to do if it is. You'll also get concrete recommendations for everything from selecting a major and an appropriate career to dealing with roommate problems and how to cope when personal matters go wrong.

This book incorporates interviews with students and key staff members at numerous colleges and universities, as well as the author's 25 years experience as an academic leader. It will show you the best, most practical ways to achieve college success while also giving you more time for fun.

Preface

I. Orientation

1. From Green to Grad
2. The Mental Maps to Success: Space and Time

II. Acing Academics

3. How to Study Effectively
4. Strategic Reading
5. Going to Class With Class
6. Testing, Testing: Will This Be on the Test?

III. Mapping Yourself

7. Self-Knowledge, Attitudes, and Excellence
8. Your Interests, Your Major, Your Career

IV. Mastering the University's Resources

9. How to Choose Courses and Get Free Tutoring
10. Who's Who — and Who Helps You Be Successful

V. Conquering Challenging Courses

11. Solving the Mathematics Course
12. Comprehending the Writing Assignment

VI. Your Campus/Commuting Life

13. Your Campus Life: The Dorm and the Drive
14. More Campus Life: Steps to Social, Financial, and Physical Success

VII. Commencement

References

Index

About the Author

Donald J. Foss, PhD, was the first in his family to go to college. He attended Hamline University and then transferred to the University of Minnesota, where he received both a bachelor's degree and a doctorate. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, he joined The University of Texas at Austin, rising to be a professor of psychology and the chair of the psychology department.

Dr. Foss has also been on the psychology faculty at Florida State University, where he was dean of its College of Arts and Sciences. Presently, he is a professor of psychology at the University of Houston, where he also has served as senior vice president for academic affairs and as provost.

Dr. Foss enjoys teaching and interacting with students. He received an All-University Outstanding Teaching Award from The University of Texas at Austin and an Outstanding Achievement Award from the University of Minnesota. His research interests are in cognitive psychology, specializing in how people comprehend both spoken and written language. He has published numerous professional articles and book chapters and has cowritten or coedited seven books.

More recently, he turned his attention to the factors that determine success in college. The evidence-based book in front of you is one result of that interest. It provides college students with the best current information and insights on how to succeed in college (and after).

A practical, no-nonsense resource that backs up its advice with a wealth of references, Your Complete Guide to College Success is enthusiastically recommended especially as a gift to aspiring high school graduates!
—Midwest Book Review

Welcome to the instructor material for Your Complete Guide to College Success. Below are chapter-by-chapter links with suggested topics for class discussion topics and ideas for making the best use of the material in your First Year Experience or other college orientation course.

This material is offered for your personal use. If you reprint or adapt them for publication, permission is required from the publisher. © 2013 American Psychological Association.

• Chapter 1. From Green to Grad
  • For the Instructor:
    • Ask your students to share the lists they produced under "threats to success," the most important thing they think they can do to be successful. Here a goal can be to determine the shared concerns and useful techniques students propose for attaining their college goals. You can return to the list of helpful tips in a couple of weeks and again in a couple of months to compare them with the evidence-based tips provided in this book.
    • Another suggested topic for discussion: There is more to do than just classwork and assignments. Plenty of adjusting is taking place. Priorities and pacing are important, and students may benefit from discussing the variety of issues they are facing, the time pressures as they adapt to college, and how they are dealing with them.
    • You may wish to conduct (all or some of) the suggested writing exercises in class to ensure that all students are engaged in the desired degree of self-reflection.
• Chapter 2. The Mental Maps to Success: Space and Time
  • For the Instructor:
    • Consider sharing (a version of) your weekly calendar with your students. They may be amazed at the number and variety of commitments you have and be interested in the amount you are booked. Be sure that you’ve included some sub-goal activities so the students can appreciate the importance of adding concrete, measurable outcomes to their calendars.
    • Ask one or two students to show examples on their calendars of action steps they plan to complete (i.e., not just class and lab meetings, but when the draft of a lab report is going to be done). Again, one of the goals of the discussion is to underscore the importance of sub-goals if they are really going to get things done.
    • Ask students to play the "168-hour per week game." How many hours do they sleep on average? How many hours in class? At work? Studying and doing homework? Doing chores of life including eating, laundry, etc.? Recreation hours, including healthy (i.e., jogging) and not necessarily healthy (i.e., watching TV, surfing the net, video games) ones? Socializing—in person and via electronic means? How much does this add up to? Some will get more than 168. That can make for a good discussion.
• Chapter 3. How to Study Effectively
  • For the Instructor:
    • Discuss the "testing effect" with your students and why it is hard to believe that it works so well. One good answer to why it does work is that it provides practice in retrieving information from memory, which is what one has to do, both on the test and in real-life situations. Simply rereading does not provide that practice nor give one feedback on whether one has learned and can retrieve the information.
    • Self-Test item #6 states: "You read in this chapter that studying is not the most effective way to study. Explain this claim." Ask students to explain it and why it is not self-contradictory. (The first "studying" refers to the stereotypical meaning of the word, while the second refers to the most effective way to study—at least the most effective way we know to date.
    • The single most important take-home point of this chapter is the importance of frequent and honest self-assessment—aided by assessment provided by classmates and frequent quizzes. In Take Action (#2) we’ve asked students to make up five questions about the material in this chapter. A good exercise is to have the students ask their best questions in class.
    • You can evaluate the quality of the questions as well as the answers—as can the students. You can also help them assess the level of detail or degree of specificity involved in a high-quality question (i.e., one you would use). You might want students to preview the section "Asking the Right Questions" in the next chapter as an aid to determining what makes a good one. Too, some instructors allow students to submit possible questions that they might actually use. The student is ahead of the game when that happens.
    • Before they make up the questions, please let the students know what type of questions you want to see (i.e., short answer, multiple-choice).
• Chapter 4. Strategic Reading
  • For the Instructor:
    • Self-Test item #5 (What do strategic reading and studying have in common?) can stimulate a productive class discussion. This is a chance to help students put together some of the key points covered in this chapter and the previous one—in particular the importance of goal-directed active learning and the importance of frequent, honest self-assessment. Some questions you might raise include:
      • What is the GOAL framework for studying?
      • What is it for reading?
      • How are they the same?
      • What are the important takeaway messages?
    • Ask students to make up five questions from another class and read them aloud, along with their answers. Encourage the use of "what," "how," and "why" questions to stimulate processing the material in a deep rather than a superficial way.
• Chapter 5. Going to Class With Class
  • For the Instructor:
    • Discussing the pros and cons of the note-taking styles can get a lively discussion going. However, students can spend too much time on that matter, but style is not likely to determine the success of their note-taking. Instead, a discussion about how to recognize the main and supporting points can point the way to improved notes.
    • Also, a good use of time is to discuss the importance of reviewing the notes (the activity with the most impact on later performance).
    • Another good use of time is to discuss the importance of knowing where they are relative to the goal of knowing the material. If you don’t know where you are, it is hard to get to your destination.
• Chapter 6. Testing, Testing: Will This Be on the Test?
  • For the Instructor:
    • Ask students to share test-taking tips with one another in class. Discuss the tips provided both for multiple-choice exams (in particular the "stick with your first instinct" belief) and for essay exams.
    • Students are often skeptical of the fact that tests are as beneficial to them as is strongly suggested by data on the testing effect. A class discussion that reminds them of what the testing effect is and that underlines the implications of this effect can therefore have a big payoff for them. If students are skeptical, ask why they do not believe it. Probing may reveal that they just think it is too hard to constantly be testing themselves. You might ask them if they think that they would improve at some skill—shooting free throws, for example—if they didn’t know whether the ball went in the hoop each time they tried. Most will say they would not improve. But each toss can be thought of not just as practice, but also as a test with feedback. So constant testing is not rare. And it really helps.
• Chapter 7. Self-Knowledge, Attitudes, and Excellence
  • For the Instructor:
    • Ask students to discuss the difference between venting about a problem—which does not lead to reduced anger or anxiety—and analyzing it and what they’ve done (or might do) about it—which can lead to reduced anger and anxiety.
    • Ask about the benefits of meeting a subgoal, and then reinforce the benefits of putting concrete subgoals on the calendar. It's a good idea, not just because it provides a constant reminder of something that has to be done, but also because it provides the occasion for good feelings when it has been accomplished.
    • Give students the assignment of visiting with a member of the teaching staff (other than you) that they find interesting. Have them send you a brief report of how they prepared for the visit and what they learned. After ensuring that each report is appropriate, you can post them so your students can learn about quite a few of the teaching staff.
• Chapter 8. Your Interests, Your Major, Your Career
  • For the Instructor:
    • In the Take Action section (#2), students are asked, "What classes, either in college or in high school, have you found most interesting? What did you like about them? Write out your answers to these questions in order to make sure you are being clear."
    • You may wish to use this as an in-class activity, followed by a discussion of how the students extrapolate from interesting classes to career choices. To the extent students are uncertain, a discussion that focuses on getting additional information may help them take useful actions.
    • If an in-class web browser and projector are available, go to the website for the Occupational Outlook Handbookopens in new window, and look up some occupations that members of the class find interesting. Show them the useful information available on the site so they will be comfortable looking things up later.
    • Ask the class to set up a template of items to cover in an informational interview. Also ask students to set up such an interview and to write a report due in about a month. In addition, students can post the responses to the template items (note: need to get permission from the interviewee, even if anonymously done) so others can see what advice was given.
    • Invite a representative from career counseling to make a presentation during part of a class meeting.
• Chapter 9. How to Choose Courses and Get Free Tutoring
  • For the Instructor:
    • Depending upon your institution and its advising culture, it may be worthwhile to spend some time discussing the core requirements. This discussion may give you the opportunity to bring out the stated reasons for the core and the types of courses that satisfy them. The importance of adaptive flexibility that was emphasized in the previous chapter has relevance here, too, and discussing what it means and how to develop it can be useful.
    • A possible homework assignment: Ask students to submit the graduation requirements for their major or prospective major. Ask them to distinguish between university requirements and those of the major (probably already marked on the relevant documents or websites, but useful for students to acknowledge).
    • Students may enjoy sharing information about the teaching stars on campus. (Of course, it is important to avoid discussing instructors that a student dislikes; that can lead simply to a gripe session.)
    • Consider having a contest in which students compete to find the most locations (and their hours of operation) on campus providing academic support. You can use this occasion to remind them of non-academic support centers, too, including the health center, mental health center, and career center.
• Chapter 10. Who’s Who—and Who Helps You Be Successful
  • For the Instructor:
    • Set up a hypothetical problem: for example, a student is trying to get a question answered about the amount of financial aid he or she received this semester; or the student believes that the instructor for, say, a math course is presenting material that is over everyone’s head. Ask students how they would proceed in each case to try to solve that problem. The Table of Organization is one useful place to start, as is talking with one of the street-smart people on the campus.
    • Describe your own role on the campus and share with students how you got to the point of being an instructor for this course. Discuss with them the career paths of faculty and staff whom you know.
    • Ask students to discuss their criteria for wide success.
• Chapter 11. Solving the Mathematics Course
  • For the Instructor:
    • The students have been asked to state the two major components of problem solving and how they can get better at them. You can launch a class discussion focused on these two items. How do students think they can get better at recognizing the type of problem in front of them? Do they have any tips for each other on how to do that? On some problem-solving techniques to try once they think they know what type of problem they face?
    • Invite the director of (or representative from) the campus math center (or mathematics department) to your class. Ask him or her to describe the type of help available to your students. Also, ask that person to share tips about recognizing problem types and about problem-solving tips. If he or she can frame it in the goal and subgoal language, that would be quite helpful.
    • Discuss with students whether they believe that doing mathematics requires a special talent or whether they think that nearly everyone can solve college algebra or calculus problems if they practice enough.
• Chapter 12. Comprehending the Writing Assignment
  • For the Instructor:
    • Ask students to discuss their views on writing—easy or hard?—and why.
    • Many students have difficulty with the idea generation phase of writing. Launch a discussion in which your students share how they go about producing ideas for their writing assignments. In particular, ask them to try the "What I Really Mean / Know / Believe Is ..." technique on a topic that they (or you) present. Also, ask them to discuss what procedures they use to turn an ill-defined writing problem into a more well-defined one.
    • Also, present a topic from your interest area—or that of a member of the class—and ask how thinking by conflict might yield ideas that can help narrow down a topic to a manageable size.
    • Ask students to describe and discuss how they determine when the flow of a paper is good. Have them share ideas about how they smooth the flow. They likely will be interested in how you do it, too.
    • Consider inviting the head (or a representative) of your campus writing center to class. Ask him or her to describe the help that is offered to students.
• Chapter 13. Your Campus Life: The Dorm and the Drive
  • For the Instructor:
    • Commuting students can share ideas about how they get and stay involved with campus activities, and they can share insider information about good study spots on campus.
    • If appropriate for your campus, consider inviting a representative from the residence hall office to your class. Ask him or her to describe the components of the roommate contract, if they have one. A topic for discussion can be the possibility of modifying and generalizing the contract to off-campus living arrangements.
    • Ask students to describe their expectations about campus life before they arrived and how it compares with the reality of it. Keep in mind the campus resources you can point them to if you detect discouragement or too major a disconnect between their hopes and their reality.
• Chapter 14. More Campus Life: Steps to Social, Financial, and Physical Success
  • For the Instructor:
    • Ask your students to discuss their work responsibilities and their effects on their college performance and experience.
    • Launch a discussion of opportunity costs. Have students find the typical starting salaries earned by graduates of their prospective major. Then calculate the lost wages associated with each additional year they take to get their degree.
    • Ask students to find the club or organization that is associated with their major or with the major they presently have in mind. What are the criteria for joining it? When are they eligible? They can store a reminder in their calendars to come back to this topic when they are eligible.
    • Ask students to share the campus clubs and organizations that they know about or have joined. Ask them to discuss the benefits they get from being involved in this way.
    • Does your student culture support risky behaviors? Do the subcultures your students inhabit support any steps to reduce those risks? Getting students to commit to risk reduction during such conversations may be beneficial to them. If practical, consider having the class choose a campus cultural event that they can attend as a group. Arrange for an expert to come to class to help lead a discussion of their interpretation of the event.