Get Up College

Only 57 percent of incoming college freshmen will graduate over the next six years. Your freshman year is critical! Learn time-tested strategies to help ensure that you won’t become the next dropout statistic. Discover how to: Strengthen your resilience to anxiety, depression, and stress by cultivating an impenetrable thought-life. Become a better time and money manager—”handle your business” easier. Implement the goal-setting strategies of top academic, entrepreneurial, and professional performers. Quickly realize your true purpose for college (and life)—graduate faster! Easily connect with peers to form friendships that will last a lifetime. Identify mentors who will help foster your inner genius. And much more!

Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose recent US wars and Wall Street bailouts, yet most remain passive and appear resigned to powerlessness. In Get Up, Stand Up, Bruce Levine offers an original and convincing explanation for this passivity. Many Americans are deeply demoralized by decades of oppressive elitism, and they have lost confidence that genuine democracy is possible. Drawing on phenomena such as learned helplessness, the abuse syndrome, and other psychological principles and techniques for pacifying a population, Levine explains how major US institutions have created fatalism. When such fatalism and defeatism set in, truths about social and economic injustices are not enough to set people free. However, the situation is not truly hopeless. History tells us that for democratic movements to get off the ground, individuals must recover self-respect, and a people must regain collective confidence that they can succeed at eliminating top-down controls. Get Up, Stand Up describes how we can recover dignity, confidence, and the energy to do battle. That achievement fills in the missing piece that, until now, has undermined so many efforts to energize genuine democracy. Get Up, Stand Up details those strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have successfully employed to gain power. We the People can unite, gain strength, wisely do battle, and wrest power away from the ruling corporate-government partnership (the "corporatocracy"). Get Up, Stand Up explains how.

The strengths and failures of the American college, and why liberal education still matters As the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential. The traditional four-year college experience—an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers—is in danger of becoming a thing of the past. In College, prominent cultural critic Andrew Delbanco offers a trenchant defense of such an education, and warns that it is becoming a privilege reserved for the relatively rich. In describing what a true college education should be, he demonstrates why making it available to as many young people as possible remains central to America's democratic promise. In a brisk and vivid historical narrative, Delbanco explains how the idea of college arose in the colonial period from the Puritan idea of the gathered church, how it struggled to survive in the nineteenth century in the shadow of the new research universities, and how, in the twentieth century, it slowly opened its doors to women, minorities, and students from low-income families. He describes the unique strengths of America’s colleges in our era of globalization and, while recognizing the growing centrality of science, technology, and vocational subjects in the curriculum, he mounts a vigorous defense of a broadly humanistic education for all. Acknowledging the serious financial, intellectual, and ethical challenges that all colleges face today, Delbanco considers what is at stake in the urgent effort to protect these venerable institutions for future generations.

From award-winning higher education journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Selingo comes a revealing look from inside the admissions office—one that identifies surprising strategies that will aid in the college search. Getting into a top-ranked college has never seemed more impossible, with acceptance rates at some elite universities dipping into the single digits. In Who Gets In and Why, journalist and higher education expert Jeffrey Selingo dispels entrenched notions of how to compete and win at the admissions game, and reveals that teenagers and parents have much to gain by broadening their notion of what qualifies as a “good college.” Hint: it’s not all about the sticker on the car window. Selingo, who was embedded in three different admissions offices—a selective private university, a leading liberal arts college, and a flagship public campus—closely observed gatekeepers as they made their often agonizing and sometimes life-changing decisions. He also followed select students and their parents, and he traveled around the country meeting with high school counselors, marketers, behind-the-scenes consultants, and college rankers. While many have long believed that admissions is merit-based, rewarding the best students, Who Gets In and Why presents a more complicated truth, showing that “who gets in” is frequently more about the college’s agenda than the applicant. In a world where thousands of equally qualified students vie for a fixed number of spots at elite institutions, admissions officers often make split-second decisions based on a variety of factors—like diversity, money, and, ultimately, whether a student will enroll if accepted. One of the most insightful books ever about “getting in” and what higher education has become, Who Gets In and Why not only provides an unusually intimate look at how admissions decisions get made, but guides prospective students on how to honestly assess their strengths and match with the schools that will best serve their interests.

CONQUERING COLLEGE: WHAT THEY DON'T TELL YOU differs from most "how-to-succeed-in-college" books by going far beyond university catolog and freshman and transfer student Orientation descriptions of college and how succeed in college and beyond. Chapter 1 informs readers of the four most commons ways that students choose to go about experiencing college, and the consequences - both positive and negative - of choosing one way, as opposed to another. Chapter 2 focuses on the four most common types of professors, and gives tips on how to thrive under each type. Subsequent chapters focus on choosing the right major, guidance counselors, the relative importance of grades, winning and losing the good will of professors, what the course syllabi tell, misuages of email, the halo effect, sleep, and how to get glowing letters of recommendation that lead to admission to either graduate or professional schools or post-graduation employment. These chapters also carry conversations with college graduates willing to discuss the extent to which - and the reasons why - they feel they did or did not leave college a success. And they contain conversations with professors willing to discuss the criteria - other than exam scores and term paper grades - they use in determining final student grades, and for whom they will write the most glowing letters of recommendation

Tips from over 70 college baseball coaches and pro scouts describing how to market yourself to the college of your dreams. -from front cover

Getting into college is one of life’s most daunting challenges. Why not let the experts help? The experts in this case include dozens of college consultants, admissions officers, parents, and, best of all, hundreds of students who have experienced the process firsthand. Individual chapters cover such topics as getting started, preparing for the SAT, deciding which colleges to apply to, perfecting applications and essays, putting one’s best foot forward in an interview, and what to do for extracurricular activities and summer vacations. Additional chapters explain what to look for when visiting schools, how to get financial aid, getting support from counselors and parents, dealing with rejection and acceptance, and how to pick the right school. This expanded edition includes special “Counselor’s Corner” features, material on “How to Survive Getting Your Kid into College,” Harvard Law grad Jay Brody’s discussion of how to write the best application essay, and much more.