Customer Reviews

How to Become a Straight-A Student: The Unconventional Strategies Real College Students Use to Score High While Studying Less

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Book provides very useful suggestions intended for undergrads or college students. I wish I had read it during my first year, it would have saved me a lot of struggle. I would recommend it to anyone who is pursuing post-secondary education. The actual content of the book includes suggestions on how to worry less and receive better grades, while gives advice on notetaking skills, paper writing tips, and exam preparation in the most efficient way. The main message of the book is to avoid the procrastination and to plan and prepare everything in advance, by working a little bit every day instead of leaving a large load of work to the last minute. Easy to read.

The large number five-star ratings this book has been given on Amazon US are well-deserved. It describes in an orderly, organized way what top students have learned about making good grades without becoming a joyless grind. Over many years as a writer, I've stumbled into most of the techniques he discussed, but I wish oh-so-much that someone had given me this book as I started college. High schools should use it as a textbook in classes for college-bound seniors.

That said, I have two suggestions.

First, this book was written to be useful for a long time. Other than a passing mention of Google, there's little here that wouldn't have been applicable ten years ago or ten years from now. That's good writing. Who wants to revise a book every few years? But in the here-and-now, some time-specific advice is helpful. Here are three that came to me as I read.

1. If you have an iPhone, an iPod touch, or a similar device with you all the time, use it to capture thoughts. Get one of the note applications, create a document for each assignment, and copy down ideas as they come to you. Keep it beside your bed, so you can take down ideas that come in the middle of the night. Don't trust your memory.

2. Near the end, he suggests going a lonely place and reading your paper aloud as a way to catch grammatical errors and poorly worded sentences. There's an easier approach that will probably let you catch more errors and is less tiring. Use the text-to-speech function of your computer to have it read your paper to you. Hearing will cause you to catch mistakes you won't see when reading

3. Remember that Microsoft Word isn't the best writing tool out there. There are applications specifically designed to make the drafting, outlining and writing process much easier. On my Mac, I use Scrivener and love it. There are similar applications for Windows.

Second, is my frustration with what the book does not say. College should be more than a game to get the credentials to make lots of money. We should be doing more than jumping through hoops and pleasing professors by repeating back their opinions. In the beginning, Cal Newport suggests that the goal of his book should be making good grades easily enough that you have time to party and--yes he said it--get drunk. That's unfortunate. There's more to life than partying and all your hard work in college with come to nothing if you end up a drunk. Look for ways to make the time you save more constructive. Study topics that interest you even though they're not part of the course work. And last but not least, get involved in activities other than partying.

In short, remember, there's more to college than making straight A's.

--Michael W. Perry, Untangling Tolkien: A Chronology and Commentary for The Lord of the Rings

This book is short and sweet. There is very little filler which is really nice to see in a self-help book these days. Usually the author feels obligated to write a long tome which just ends up being boring. The summaries are excellent and can be re-read later to refresh what he said.

All the advice seems really sound. There was a bunch of good ideas and the author doesn't throw in semi-good ideas to increase the length of the book.

Make sure you follow his blog too!

I love this book, it definitely increased my GPA. Wish I had read it sooner :)

Way better than his other book. don't bother buying that one - get this instead.
This book has a very solid time management system, the best I've seen, and I've read a lot of time management books. It's simple yet effective. Reading about it, you will have an 'aha' moment and wonder why you hadn't implemented it before. There's some solid stuff about writing papers, and some good commentary on keeping things do-able and learning effectively without unnecessary effort. His blog is also good - be sure to check it out for additional tips and tricks not mentioned in this book.

A fantastic book, I'm so happy I bought it! I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had actually already implemented many of the tips the writer offers (I'm currently doing high school upgrading with straight A's but am going to nursing school soon and was looking to see if my study habits would apply in college as well), however those methods are taken one step further in the book and developed to be even more efficient. This book shows that excelling in school is not about being naturally smart or putting in long hours, but about organization. If you want to get great grades for minimal time expenditure, this is the book for you!

Most of the stuff is common sense, ie) attending classes. But Newport does give methods of suceeding school, that otherwise isnt common sense. The best part is i got this free from a amazon gift card through [...].