College-admission letters go out
this month, and most recipients (and their parents) will place great importance
on which universities said yes and which said no. A growing body of evidence,
however, suggests that the most significant thing about college is not where
you go, but what you do once you get there. Historian and educator Ken
Bain has written a book on this subject, What the Best College Students Do.
that draws a road map for how students
can get the most out of college, no matter where they go.
As Bain details, there are three
types of learners: surface, who do as little as possible to get by; strategic,
who aim for top grades rather than true understanding; and deep learners, who
leave college with a real, rich education. Bain then introduces us to a host of
real-life deep learners: young and old, scientific and artistic, famous or
still getting there. Although they each have their own insights, Bain
identifies common patterns in their stories:
Pursue passion, not A’s. When he was in college, says the eminent astrophysicist Neil
deGrasse Tyson, he was “moved by curiosity, interest and fascination, not
by making the highest scores on a test.” As an adult, he points out, “no one
ever asks you what your grades were. Grades become irrelevant.” In his
experience as a student and a professor, says Tyson, “ambition and innovation
trump grades every time.”
Get comfortable with failure. When he was still a college student, comedian Stephen
Colbert began working with an improvisational theater in Chicago. “That
really opened me up in ways I hadn’t expected,” he tells Bain. “You must be
O.K. with bombing. You have to love it.” Colbert adds, “Improvisation is a
great educator when it comes to failing. There’s no way you are going to get it
right every time.”
Make a personal connection to your
studies. In her sophomore year in college,
Eliza Noh, now a professor of Asian-American studies at California State
University at Fullerton, took a class on power in society: who has it, how it’s
used. “It really opened my eyes. For the first time in my life, I realized that
learning could be about me and my interests, about who I was,” Noh tells Bain.
“I didn’t just listen to lectures, but began to use my own experiences as a
jumping-off point for asking questions and wanting to pursue certain concepts.”
Read and think actively. Dean Baker, one of the few economists to predict the
economic collapse of 2008, became fascinated in college by the way economic
forces shape people’s lives. His studies led him to reflect on “what he
believed and why, integrating and questioning,” Bain notes. Baker says: ”I
was always looking for arguments in something I read, and then pinpointing the
evidence to see how it was used.”
Ask big questions. Jeff Hawkins, an engineer who created the first mobile
computing device, organized his college studies around four profound questions
he wanted to explore: Why does anything exist? Given that a universe
does exist, why do we have the particular laws of physics that we do? Why do we
have life, and what is its nature? And given that life exists, what’s the
nature of intelligence? For many of the subjects he pursued, Bain notes, “there
was no place to ‘look it up,’ no simple answer.”
Cultivate empathy for others. Reyna Grande, author of the novels Across a Hundred
Mountains and Dancing with Butterflies, started writing
seriously in her junior year in college. “Writing fiction taught Reyna to
empathize with the people who populated her stories, an ability that she
transferred to her life,” Bain notes: “As a writer, I have to understand what
motivates a character, and I see other people as characters in the story of
life,” Grande says. “When someone makes mistakes, I always look at what made
them act the way they do.”
Set goals and make them real. Tia Fuller, who later became an accomplished saxophone
player, began planning her future in college, envisioning the successful
completion of her projects. ”I would keep focused on the light at the end
of the tunnel, and what that accomplishment would mean,” she tells Bain. “That
would help me develop a crystalized vision.”
Find a way to contribute. Joel Feinman, now a lawyer who provides legal services
to the poor, was set on his career path by a book he read in college: The
Massacre at El Mozote, an account of a 1981 slaughter of villagers in El
Salvador. After writing and staging a campus play about the massacre, and
traveling to El Salvador, Feinman “decided that I wanted to do something
to help people and bring a little justice to the world.”
