How to Win at College
I recently finished reading Cal Newport’s book, How to Win At College. Below, I’ll highlight 5 of my favorite tips that help me maximize my college experience.
#6: Apply to Ten Scholarships a Year
Cal means business. If you want to stand out, you need to have a rockstar résumé. Although work experience and education serve as the foundation of your résumé, the honors and awards section is the place where you can throw in some pretty eye-catching scholarships and awards you’ve accumulated over the years.
Often times, scholarships seem to set the bar too high. Why bother applying when another student with phenomenal achievements will be selected? Fortunately, Cal dispels the myth that scholarships are only handed down to the most gifted and outgoing students.
The reality is that many scholarships and awards are actually handed down from an overworked, uninterested administrator who was assigned the unfortunate task of choosing a winner from the depressingly small pool of students who actually bothered to apply correctly. Therefore, for a lot of small awards, if you take the time to apply, and demonstrate diligent effort in your application, your odds of winning are quite good.
The plan is simple. Find ten scholarships that align with your career goals, mark them on your calendar, and apply to every single one of them. Rinse and repeat your sophomore, junior, and senior year.
While this aggressive approach may force you to sacrifice some hours, by the time you graduate you will have amassed a head-turning list of honors. Think about it. For every ten well-selected scholarships and awards you apply for, you probably have a good shot at winning at least one, and maybe even two or three.
By the end of college, you will have amassed an impressive list of achievements that will distinguish you from your peers.
A quick note: Any time you have to write a few paragraphs for an application, spend an extra minute and copy and paste the prompt and your response into Google Drive. If you ever come across a similar prompt, you can recycle your writing! This is something I do whenever I apply to anything including internships, hackathons, and club e-board positions, and it definitely saves me a lot of time.
#12: Avoid Daily To-Do Lists
Here is the most important rule you will ever hear about time management: Daily to-do lists do not work at college. Your schedule is too complicated and too unpredictable. Some assignments could easily take up your entire evening, while others may take just minutes. Friends will drop by unexpectedly, meals will last for hours, and interesting opportunities for fun will pop up at the last moment. A to-do list can’t tame this hectic lifestyle.
Here’s a snapshot of my schedule for next week.
It’s pretty hectic (for me at least). But college is all about embracing spontaneity and taking you where your curiosity leads. There have been so many times where I’ve set a goal for myself to meditate for 10 minutes, write a post on Quora, and read a news article on a daily basis, but I can never sustain these daily goals since each day varies in workload, not to mention there’s always an interesting event that pops up that I end up attending. Unless you have the time management skills of Elon Musk, it’s likely that the “Daily To-Do List Strategy” won’t work for you.
Instead, tailor your to-do list to accommodate your workload each day. Spend 5 minutes before going to bed jotting down some tasks you hope to finish tomorrow, and make sure they’re small and specific! Don’t write down “finish history essay”. Instead, write “finish intro paragraph of history essay”.
#16: Always Be Working on a “Grand Project”
The vast majority of the most interesting and outgoing people I know are always working on some grand project. One of my friends is juggling a full course load and working as a full-time software engineer. His “grand project” is founding a healthcare/technology startup and leading a 10-person team on building an app that already has investors lined up. He’s a modern-day Renaissance man. Another friend has her ambitions set on attending law school. She’s currently working as a JusticeCorps Volunteer, serving in student government, and has interned and worked alongside California Secretary of State, Alex Padilla. My project? Running a (small) YouTube channel where I post vlogs about computer science and hackathons.
Working on a grand project that you’re passionate about will teach you many skills. For me, running a YouTube channel has introduced me to skills like video editing, photography, marketing, tagging, interpreting analytics, and time management. It has also exposed me to concepts like SEO, audio quality, and audience retention. (It also makes you a more interesting person!)
#22: Study in Fifty-Minute Chunks
Let’s face it. It’s difficult to concentrate on almost anything for more than an hour. Millennials and Gen Z kids (like me) are trained to have fragmented attention spans due to our pervasive use of social media. Naturally, when we set a goal for ourselves to buckle down and study for 3 hours straight for that chemistry midterm, we end up failing miserably and shaming ourselves for our terrible productivity skills.
Studying in fifty-minute chunks is ridiculously efficient. Not too short (like the Pomodoro technique) but also not excessively long. It’s a great way to churn out a few coding problems or send out a few internship applications without exhausting yourself. Definitely give it a go.
#27: Write Outside of Class (what I’m doing now!)
Writing is so important. Even though I’m a computer science major (known for our extreme tendencies to hate all things English, literature, and humanities), I’ve found that writing continues to sneak its way into my everyday life. Good writing skills can turn a stale résumé into one with pizzazz. They will help you finish those short Google Surveys for that club’s e-board position that you really want. Applying to a hackathon? Gotta write up those paragraphs explaining why you’re interested in attending.
There’s no escape from writing, so why not spice up your writing by writing outside of class? There’s plenty of outlets like Quora and Medium to post your writing snippets, and you can build up a cool portfolio while honing your writing skills. If you’re looking for some writing inspiration, check out the writings of Yehong Zhu and Kalvin Lam. They definitely inspire me!
And finally, a personal tip from me…
Apply to internships early. Work experience is hard to come by when you’re a college freshman bombarded with p-sets and spontaneous urges to explore the city and make new friends. A lot of companies recruit students early. And by early, I mean September/October/November (right when you start school!). So definitely spend some time spicing up that résumé of yours.
