The Secrets of College Success Wins Best Book Award

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New book for college students by Lynn Jacobs and Jeremy Hyman

Professors Lynn Jacobs and Jeremy Hyman are determined to teach every college student what professors are expecting of them and then show them how to do it. Their book The Secrets of College Success, published in July by Wiley Publishing, has won the USA Book News Best Books 2010 Award in the college guides category.

“I knew the time was ripe for a book like this,” said Jacobs, professor of art in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. “While teaching at Vanderbilt, I told students that if they weren’t sure what the thesis of their paper should be, they should come see me rather than try to fake it. A hundred students lined up. That’s when I knew advice for college, from professors, was needed.”

The book is written in a quick, blog-like style and includes 640 tips for college success. Some cover traditional areas of concern: time-management, study habits, making the leap from high school to college, tips for “college-level” reading, note taking and oral presentations. But other tips are geared to more advanced students: picking a major, tips for e-mailing your professor and connecting via Skype, study abroad (when it’s desirable and when not), preparing to apply for graduate school, and tips and techniques for landing a job.

Jacobs said that what makes the tips they give more than just common sense is that they give students insight into the professors' perspective -- an insider's viewpoint -- which gives students a very different sense both of how to do the tips and why they work.

For example, said Jacobs, while many students know it's important to take good class notes, they have no idea how many notes they really should be taking.

“We give the rule of thumb that students should be taking about one page of notes per 15 minutes of class, which often comes to students as a major surprise. Plus, we tell them that a professor like me walks into each class with about eight pages of notes. Professors don't usually reveal this sort of detail to students. So if students come out of the class with less than the recommended four pages of notes, they’re likely to have huge gaps in their record of the content presented in class. And given that most professors believe that if they said it in class, it’s fair game for the test, having big chunks of content missing from their notes can be a major problem come test time.”

This book represents the only self-help content written completely by college professors. The tips draw on Jacobs' and Hyman’s more than 30 years of experience, teaching at eight different colleges and universities.

The authors write a weekly column for U.S. News and World Report at www.usnews.com/professorsguide. A television tape is available at www.professorsguide.com/media/kgo-tv.wmv. 

The book is available locally at the University of Arkansas Bookstore in the Garland Center.