What the Best College Students Do

The best students are curious risktakers who make connections across disciplines. By following those instinctsrather than simply chasing successthe best students achieved itA wonderful exploration of excellence.FortuneSkillfully weaves together some of the best research about effective learning strategies with moving stories about remarkable lifelong learners. Some of them had great teachers. But most of them succeed because of what they did for themselves.Thomas Luxon, Dartmouth CollegeWe are always telling students to find their passion. Now we have a book that looks at how that happensKen Bain can really tell a storyit is very rare for a book based upon research to be such a compelling read.Jos Antonio Bowen, Southern Methodist UniversityCombining academic research on learning and motivation with insights drawn from interviews with people who have won Nobel Prizes, Emmys, or otherwise led lives of meaning and accomplishment, Ken Bain identifies the key attitudes that distinguish the best college students from their peers. Most start out with a belief that intelligence and ability are expandable, not fixed. This leads them to make connections across disciplines and to find ways of reconceiving problems rather than simply looking for the right answer. Intrinsically motivated by their own sense of purpose, they are not overly impressed with conventional notions of success. The best students study in small bites, focus more on concept than procedure, and work collaboratively, getting friends to test them on their knowledge. They dont achieve success by making success their goalwhen it comes, it is a byproduct of following their intellectual curiosity, solving useful problems, and taking risks to learn and grow.